Wrath
by Sweet Anonymity
Summary: Tony finds out he has a fan. Not the good kind. ::Crossover with "The Sentinel;" sequel to "Instincts"::
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of the characters, except the villainous few I made up (whom I don't particularly _want_…).

**A huge debt of gratitude to: **My beta, Imbecamiel (awesomeness itself, wielding the gentlest of grammar hammers), to Random Flyer (who has been helping me on another NCIS story, and in the process stirring up the NCIS muse at large), to TrinaXO (who's wonderful PM made me particularly excited to finish this story), and to all you other great reviewers who've been sending me an extra helping of encouragement by way of your comments. :)

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**Chapter 1**

Gibbs' wrath was equal to Abby's worry.

Ziva might note it, and worry about Gibbs, but whereas you could pat Abby on the shoulder and try to talk things through, with Gibbs even a glance that lingered on him too long could have bad results. Very bad results, as McGee was already finding out this morning.

"Why are your eyes on _me_, McGee?" Gibbs drew the agent's last name out into two syllables, leveling him with an assessing look that had been known to make seasoned Marines squirm.

"Well, I uh…" To his credit, McGee was getting better and better at getting a hold of himself in these moments, where mettle met Gibbs—and mettle inevitably failed miserably. At least he was learning how to take his reproofs like a man. No, like an _NCIS agent_. He cleared his throat. "Right, Boss. Eyes going back to the computer."

It had been one of the least relaxing weekends in Ziva's experience, and that was saying quite a bit. The true turmoil hadn't begun until Sunday afternoon, but there'd been phone calls exchanged with increasing frequency and alarm. Most of the calls started with Abby, but a surprising number had been made by Gibbs, too. Everyone had called their teammates, Ducky, Abby—and even braved the wrath of Gibbs—in their quest to find out where Tony'd disappeared to. At first the conversations had almost been humorous. McGee'd called Ziva, trying not to sound overly concerned in his inquiries—"Have you heard anything from Tony since Friday, Ziva?"—and Ziva in turn had tried to sound equally nonchalant about calling Abby.

And on and on it'd gone. By the time they realized something was most definitely up—at least something _unusual_ was going on with DiNozzo, even if he hadn't actually disappeared—Gibbs was already grouchier than a mother bear missing her cubs. When Tony's apartment had been visited Sunday evening, and no Tony found occupying it, Abby had begun to wring her hands in earnest. She'd claimed to have "a really, really, really bad feeling about this."

When Tony hadn't come in Monday morning they were all agreeing with her about there being something "majorly hinky" going on. Ziva might be the first to shake her head over the rapid turnover rate of Tony's love life, but she knew he was too good an agent, and too much under the Awe of Gibbs, to let a one night stand make him hours late for work. Besides, somehow, Ziva didn't think Tony led quite as busy a life of romance he liked to lead people to believe. Being Gibbs' senior field agent was Tony's real passion—it was what he pursued with rock-solid, unswerving dedication. Even if he had to throw the sand in people's eyes, with his flippant way of joking through life.

It was approaching noon, but she knew none of them had much of an appetite. Gibbs was pushing them, but they were pushing themselves, too. Even if they had very little to go on, they had that _little_ to go on, and they _would_ go on it until they got something more substantial.

But even with their wholehearted effort into the search, the atmosphere in the office was tense. Gibbs seemed sometimes to have a limitless capacity for feeling responsible for the protection of people, particularly those he had "adopted", with the primary requisite for his help just being that they needed _help_. That was enough. He could be hard enough to live with when total strangers were in danger; one of his team being missing made surviving in the same room next to impossible.

His team held the ultimate claim to his protection. Compounding things, in addition to being one of _his _by right of the job, Tony was Gibbs' Sentinel. If someone was detaining Anthony DiNozzo by force, he or she was already as good as dead. And that was only if Ziva got her hands on this person first. Gibbs or Abby might do much worse.

* * *

He'd been sitting in the dark for a long time, Tony knew that much. Beyond that, he had to strain his brain more than it was worth. His sluggish thought processes simply weren't up to the task.

Right now, though, he was even challenging how long "a long time" was. It felt like it could've been days. He remembered almost coming to consciousness a couple of times, only to be sucked back down into a murky dreamscape before he'd even surfaced long enough to open his eyes. But, then, maybe he hadn't been dreaming—or maybe he was dreaming now.

How could he knew, when the difference between opened eyes and closed was so minute as to be imperceptible? There was a sliver of light to his left, but far off in his peripheral vision, and he'd have to turn his head to get a better look. It seemed like a lot of work, just to look at a sliver of light.

As he woke further, his brain finally decided to send him a trickle of gradual bits and pieces of information as to his situation. They were interesting facts, to be sure. Even if he wasn't sure what the facts _meant_, he went over each point with a fine-tooth comb, trying to make sense of it all.

He was sitting in a chair. Not a particularly comfortable chair, either. The back had funny ridges that were digging into his lower back. But there was padding on the seat, he noted. Couldn't they, the makers of the chair, have put some of that on the back, where it was needed? At least it meant his rear wasn't completely numb from the hours of sitting. But his hands weren't so lucky. They were really cold, from what he could tell. He tried to wiggle his fingers, and realized there was a good explanation for the lack of circulation: his wrists were tied securely to the arms of the chair. The arms didn't have any padding, either.

As it turned out, his legs were tied, with similar merciless security, to the legs of the chair—which were also lacking in padding. Well, he could have predicted _that_. Not many people would notice the discomfort of pad-less chair legs, either, unless their legs had been tied to them for hours on end. _You're not here to test chairs, DiNozzo, _the voice in his head—which sometimes had the gall to sound like Gibbs—reminded him.

"No," Tony muttered aloud, not caring if he _was_ talking to himself, "maybe I'm _not_ here to test chairs. But I've always been good at multitasking, and _whoever tied me up_ isn't giving me much else to do."

He lifted his chin from where it'd been slumped against his chest, looking around at the darkness, kinda hoping that "whoever tied me up" might pop out and own up to the deed. Though that didn't happen, he did find that there were a few muted patches of light in front of him, high up. The sight made him growl in frustration. He didn't have any helpful clues to go on, just a sliver of light, a murky splotch of light, and a chair with insufficient padding. He tugged ineffectively at the bindings on his wrists and ankles, and barked out a few curses. They echoed around the, apparently, large room, and made him feel just a little bit better. The satisfaction was fleeting.

With a less defiant string of swearing, he slumped forward again with a sigh. Though his head ached, he decided it was time for some serious mental back-tracking.

It had been Saturday night. Had he had somewhere to go? Nope. As he recalled, he hadn't had any of those things called "plans" that he was always so keen on boasting about to his co-workers, though he did remember telling Ziva about a cute blond named Linda he had waiting for him. Riiight, _Linda_: the token female character in that movie he'd rented. She'd been real good at her role, too, letting out an ear-piercing scream when the vine turned out to be a boa constrictor, and going all clingy and hysterical on the hero afterwards.

But when he'd gotten home, he hadn't finished the movie, had he? Not a quarter of an hour after getting home he'd been back in the car, drifting aimlessly out on the town. Too restless for a night at home with popcorn, he'd headed to a bar, the need to be around people overriding his recent distaste for the stuffy, raucous environment. Though things had gotten fuzzy after the first couple drinks, he was fairly sure he hadn't let himself consume enough to take him beyond comfortably warm to truly drunk.

Aha, now he remembered the great irony of the whole evening. He'd met a waitress named Linda. She'd been a brunette instead of a blond, but he wasn't one to quibble over hair color—don't look a gift-horse in the mouth, right?

Maybe he should've made an exception this time. Linda had encouraged him in one parting drink. After that, he remembered struggling against a lot of things: the fuzzy feeling in his head, the sudden lethargy that made him want to sleep in his chair instead of get up and make a call for a cab, and, last but not least, the irresistible pull of gravity, and thinking he hadn't had nearly enough beer to be this out of it. From there, it was all fade-to-black.

_Fade-to-black. Good one, Tony. _Now if only the black would fade to white, he'd sure appreciate it.

But when the white came, it didn't bother coming gently. He only had a few minutes to register the sound of footsteps approaching, and then a door opened, admitting glorious light. Only it wasn't so glorious on his light-deprived eyes, and when a switch was flipped, flooding the room in florescent brightness, he gave an involuntary exclamation at the pain. The word he used to greet whomever it was that flipped that switch _wasn't_ involuntary.

The last thing he expected was a soft voice near his ear, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think…" Footsteps moved away, and the light that had been burning at his retinas even through closed lids lessened considerably. The voice came again, "Is that better?"

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N**: 'Tis short—sorry! But the rest is written (eleven chapters), all of which will lead up to a larger story than this (also finished), to be followed up by several shorter stories. I may not always be able to respond to everyone, or at the length to those I do respond to, because I've been having some wrist and hand problems that too much typing aggravates—but I do treasure everyone's comments very much, so if you have the time please drop me a line telling me what you think. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

"I appreciate you finding the time, Jethro…"

"Yeah, well, I didn't find much, Duck."

Ducky sighed aloud. It had taken some doing to get Gibbs to come have a bite to eat with him, but it seemed now as if he hadn't convinced him so much to_eat_, as sit at a table with him and pick at his sandwich. Abby had been quite correct in her assessment of the situation. Things were dire indeed. Though he wasn't confident Abby's additional idea as to an, at least partial, solution was as certain a thing: "He'll listen to you, Duck-man, he always does."

Listen to, and respect him, yes—but believe? Gibbs was a not a man whose actions were predictable. Ducky might've had some skills at profiling, and he probably knew Gibbs as well as, if not better than, anyone. He knew that, right now, Gibbs was feeling the familiar pull of protectiveness toward someone for whom he was responsible. A driven Leroy Jethro Gibbs was not a new sight at all.

"You invite me out to lunch so you could stare at me?"

Ducky gave a short laugh. "Well partially, yes. You have us all very worried about you, you know. You're not sleeping, you hardly eat anything—"

"I'll _survive_ insomnia and a few skipped meals."

_And Tony might not survive whatever he's going through. If he's even still alive now. _Yes, Ducky could read between the lines easily. Gibbs was good at saying what he meant without coming out and saying it. Usually he just stared at people until they figured things out themselves. But on top of actually responding to him—however minimally—Gibbs was also showing considerable respect by restraining himself from looking quite as surly as Ducky was sure he felt.

"Wherever Tony is, I know one thing for certain, Jethro."

"And what's that?"

"That he wouldn't want you to blame yourself for not finding him."

Gibbs ran a hand through his hair, which was already sticking up here-and-there in unusual disarray. "I _am_ going to find him, Duck."

"Of course you are. Tony will not doubt it for a moment, either, I guarantee you. It's only a matter of—"

"—Time. I know. Search investigations always are." He shook his head with a mirthless smile. "And yet, somehow, time is the one thing you've never got when someone's missing." He began pushing back his chair. "Thanks for the lunch, Duck."

"You might try _eating_ it. It'll do you more good that way; I'll stake my reputation as a doctor on it."

"I need to go."

"What you _need_ is to sit and receive some nourishment," Ducky corrected, bearing down on the other man with a penetrating glare. He meant for it to sound stern, and sure enough, Gibbs paused.

Gibbs met his unyielding expression with impatience, which relented after a brief stare-down, in which Ducky felt himself the victor. He hardly felt triumphant, though, when the hard set of his face shifted into minutely more unguarded weariness.

"Jethro…" _Why must you be so _hard _on yourself? _There was only one other person Ducky knew who could keep up with Gibbs' often unreasonably harsh and driven self-set standards.

"You can analyze me to your heart's content. After I find Tony."

"Your team's not about to fall apart the moment you turn your back," Ducky countered. "Ziva, Timothy, Abigail, and myself are all just as eager for answers as you are, and we are all doing everything that can be done."

Gibbs conceded Ducky the point with a grunt. He couldn't argue against his team's competency, or their dedication in the search for Tony.

"Now, why don't you kill two birds with one stone, and remain where you are for two minutes together, eat your sandwich, and update me on what we know so far of young Anthony's disappearance."

Gibbs took a bite with pointed slowness, and raised his eyebrows in a "You happy now?" expression.

Ducky smiled his approval, and waited patiently as he downed a few more bites and began reporting in clipped sentences:

"Nothing out of place at DiNozzo's house. Abby traced his cell, and we found it in Tony's car, outside a Kowalski's Pub," Gibbs leaned his elbows against the table top, glancing abstractedly at the sparse number of after-lunch-hour patrons around them in the small restaurant. "Car was locked. No signs of a forced entry. The owner of the bar saw Tony late Saturday evening; Tony had a few drinks, but didn't overdo it. The girl who waited on him said he was in a good mood, talkative. Came in around nine, had his last drink at a quarter to eleven, and left. When the waitress commented on whether or not he was fit to drive, he said he'd call someone. As we speak, Abby's double-checking the security camera feed from outside the bar's entrance—but she says the tape shows DiNozzo coming and going without incident."

"He must have intended to return to his car to retrieve his cell and call someone to pick him up."

"Yeah. And never made it. Whatever happened to him, it took place between the time he walked out of the bar's camera range, and where he should've entered the range of the corner gas station's cameras."

"Ah, yes, Abby told me there was an empty lot between the gas station and bar. A small blind-spot, but all that was needed, apparently."

"No blood, or any signs of a struggle. He was a bit unsteady when he left the bar, so he could've been slipped something in one of his drinks."

"I do not suppose we are speaking of the kind of neighborhood where a helpful citizen might have taken note of suspicious activity?" Ducky asked dryly.

"Nope," Gibbs said simply, finishing his meal and sitting back in his chair. "Ziva and McGee asked around. No one's reported seeing anything out of the normal."

"_So far_," Ducky interjected, with more optimism than he felt. "I suppose we would've received a call by now, either from Anthony himself, or someone who recognized him from the description sent out, if he'd simply wandered off in a drunken stupor."

A small smile tugged at Gibbs' mouth, and he shook his head. "Nah, Duck, he doesn't wander off when he's drunk."

"Oh?"

"Too well trained for that."

Ducky knew he spoke not only of Tony's ingrained instincts as a cop and NCIS agent, but something else as well. It wouldn't surprise Ducky at all to discover that Gibbs was the rare possessor of enough of DiNozzo's trust that the younger man had learned to turn to his boss for help during his more vulnerable moments. Ducky knew for a fact that was what Tony had done at the pinnacle of his crisis in discovering the dangers of his newly acquired hyper-active senses.

"The waitress."

Ducky was jarred from his internal musings by the words, growled angrily by Gibbs.

Before Ducky could question him further, Gibbs had shoved back his chair and was on his feet. "She knows more. She knows a lot more."

"As I heard it, she was quite concerned and distraught to learn…"

"It seemed like it then, but now that I've had time to –" Gibbs shook his head. "Not concerned about what might've happened to _Tony_. Not as much as she was scared to save her own skin."

"Jethro…" But he was gone, and Ducky knew what the look in his eyes had meant. If that poor girl was scared now, she was about to become much more so. Or, if she was involved in Anthony's disappearance, Ducky could not pity her for the fate she'd brought down upon herself.

* * *

"I really do apologize for the restrains. I didn't think they'd be necessary, but I like to be prepared."

Tony's eyes were still having trouble adjusting to the onslaught of light. He squinted at the man as he chatted in an amiable tone. His captor had his back to him, and was standing in front of a desk that ran the length of the wall Tony was facing, his fingers flying with familiarity across the keyboard of one of several computers there.

It took Tony longer than usual to gather himself enough to come up with something witty, but he thought he did all right under the circumstances. "Well if you feel too bad, you could always take them off."

"Ah, a sense of humor." There was a smile in the man's voice, but it felt too correct, and from the sound of it Tony guessed _his_ sense of humor was more stunted. "Perhaps I may be able to better accommodate you shortly. But we must get some questions out of the way first."

"Great. Could I go first?"

The man turned on him with a startled expression.

"Or…I could wait for you to ask one," Tony allowed graciously. Especially nice of him, considering what he really had in mind was something that involved him getting his fingers around the man's neck.

"Very well, if you wish you may ask a question."

It was obviously a gesture meant to humor him, and the condescension made Tony bristle. He took him up on the offer anyways. "Why don't we just get the clichés out the way right off the bat: who are you, and what do you want with me?" A few other words came to mind as appropriate supplements to the questions—ones that might've even made a Marine proud. Somehow, though, this guy didn't look like the type who'd be quite so impressed with them, and Tony got the feeling he wouldn't do himself any favors with the guy by making himself look even more vulgar and uncultured.

"That's two questions," the man observed, amusement even more apparent. "But, of course, you would want to know."

"Of course I would," Tony agreed pleasantly, smile tight.

"I am Thomas Avery, and you are here for the bettering of mankind."

If he'd known Avery wasn't going to laugh with him, he might've toned his own laughter down a bit. Or maybe not. When he could grab enough oxygen between laughs, he repeated, "'The _bettering of mankind_?'"

"You find the idea amusing?" Avery asked, straight-faced, still not catching on as to what was so funny, even with it pointed out for him.

"Um, no… The thought's real nice, and it's always great to feel important. It's just your vocabulary. Not to hurt your feelings, but phrases like that kinda went out of fashion some time around the middle-ages."

Avery looked down his nose at Tony critically. He had a good nose for it too—a little long, and little narrow—and small, square glasses perched on the end of it, suitable for giving narrow-eyed looks through. His eyes were pale blue, and his fair hair was in need of a trim, forelock nearly covering his eyebrows.

Without responding to his wise-crack, Avery returned his attention the computer, efficiently inputting God-knew-what.

"You a psychiatrist, or what?" Tony was getting that annoying, uncomfortable feeling that he hated, when he knew someone was trying to figure him out, and label his "issues." Like he _had_ issues.

"I've had some small training in the area." Avery returned his attention to Tony, crossing his arms. "But I am not primarily interested in your intelligence, Sentinel, one way or the other. I am far more interested in the unique abilities provided by your heightened senses."

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N:** You guys are awesome. Your PMs and reviews made me happy like you wouldn't believe. Sorry this is short, again! Chapter 3 will be longer (although you'll have to bear with me, since I'm going to be gone for ten days, and unable to post until I get back. ;))

I probably won't be able to respond to very many reviews this time—but I do read and appreciate each and every one. To quote Abby, "I am hugging you all in my mind." Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

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Tony knew he wasn't at his charming, fast-talking best. But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing, 'cause when Avery pulled out the "Sentinel" word so casually, Tony was pretty sure his own blank stare was one-hundred-percent believable.

So why didn't Avery look convinced of his ignorance?

"You are a Sentinel, there is no point in pretending otherwise."

"Um, yeah, actually there is a point," Tony interjected. "Because I don't have the foggiest idea what that is. I've been called plenty of things, but that just isn't on the list…"

"Hmm…" More quick typing from Avery, and then more scrutiny.

Tony really, really didn't like this guy. Too much thought was happening behind those glasses. "'Hmm' _what_?"

"I thought you would be more willing, Sentinel."

"Stop calling me that!" Tony reacted heatedly. As if hmm-ing at him wasn't enough, the guy had to label him like he was so much bacteria under a microscope. He said "Sentinel" like someone might say "dog."

"Why not? It is what you are."

"Am _not_," Tony growled sullenly.

Avery chuckled. "I see I have been sorely mistaken in a few assumptions about your kind."

"My kind? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I had thought to find Sentinels less self-centered, more cooperative, and certainly more mature."

"I _am_ mature."

"And a Sentinel."

He was a sly one all right. Tony glared.

"I see I cannot expect you to admit it yet. There is no need. I suppose I will simply have to carry on, knowing what you are, myself, even if you choose to childishly deny it."

Tony didn't comment.

Avery didn't care. "My turn to ask questions. I'll begin with sight. What is the maximum distance you are capable of seeing?"

"Well I made it past the fifth line at my eye exam last time. 20/10 vision, don'cha know." Tony grinned proudly.

Avery looked a little depressed, but rallied. "I meant Sentinel-sight, Mr. DiNozzo."

"_Special Agent_ DiNozzo," Tony corrected—even if "Mister" was an improvement over "Sentinel."

"That is your former occupation, not what you are. Please answer my question."

"Do you know what the penalty for kidnapping a _federal agent_ is these days, Psycho?" Tony's grin widened at Avery's more than depressed expression. "Oh, sorry, you don't like being called Psycho? I was referring to your occupation _and_ what you are."

"Let's start again—"

"Let's not."

Avery sighed loudly. "I can see I'm going to have to put some thought into how to proceed, as you've complicated matters with your inability to grasp the larger picture."

"Why don't you paint that 'larger picture' for me? I'm very visual."

"In good time, I'll explain myself. First, however, I think I'll give you some time to reconsider and, hopefully, readjust your attitude. Our exchange need not be painful, unless you choose to make it so, Sentinel. The restraints will have to stay, at least for now, I'm afraid. You have made them necessary."

Tony's glare was cut off, as, with those words, Avery turned his back on him, decisively turning off the lights.

* * *

The bar manager was a suave, energetic kid who couldn't have had too generous a gap separating him from being underage for drinking himself. He had black hair, slick with gel, and spiked in front, and he had a habit of continually gesticulating, and saying things like "calm down." Gibbs did not _need _to calm down, and the man had no idea how tempting he was making the idea of breaking a few of his fingers by the way he kept fluttering them around.

He wasn't too happy to see Gibbs' face for a second time in two days, but Gibbs didn't feel sorry for him. He wasn't too happy to be revisiting this place, either. It felt less like progress and more like going backwards. But every instinct in him was honed in on the need to wring more answers out of that waitress.

Well, he would, of course, try asking her _politely_ first, but he always liked to have a back-up plan formulating. Plan B, in this case, was not going to involve sitting around waiting for an arrest warrant.

The fingers were fluttering in front of his face again, and Gibbs' eyes tracked their movements, not really listening to the noise issuing from the mouth that belonged to the fingers. At his shoulder, McGee backed Gibbs up in supportive silence.

"You already disrupted business yesterday, and now you want to harass my employees?" the kid was just asking, indignation clear.

Gibbs leaned in closer, teasing the lines of personal space. "Actually, right now I'm thinking about _assault_—and not on Miss Ferguson."

The man's adam apple bobbed a few times. "She was pretty shaken up over yesterday, so…so make it brief." He was grasping desperately for his authority and failing—and perspiring—miserably. "Understood, Agent Gibbs?"

"Our conversation," Gibbs said, already shouldering past him towards the back room, "will be as long as Miss Ferguson decides to make it."

The bar didn't open to patrons for a few minutes yet, but some half a dozen employees were getting ready. The staff in the back room didn't appreciate the intrusion any more than Slick out front had. They didn't try to stop them, but the woman they asked stared at them with hostility for a moment, before simply nodding them in the right direction when they asked to talk to her co-worker.

Clipboard in hand, Linda was taking stock of the contents of a cupboard. She was short, and had to stand on tip-toe to peer at the top shelf. She jumped and gave something like a squeak when Gibbs spoke up unexpectedly behind her.

"S-sir—" She began to stutter, then noticed McGee and switched to, "Sirs."

"Agent Gibbs and McGee will be fine, Miss Ferguson," Gibbs said, keeping his voice deceptively neutral. "We have a few more questions for you."

She ran her tongue across dry lips. "Of course."

Gibbs didn't waste time. "You have more to tell us than what you said last night."

"I—"

"I will bring you in for questioning if I have to."

"Uh, ma'am?" McGee took a step closer, speaking in a confidential tone, as if Gibbs weren't right there listening, "I wouldn't advise letting things get to that point. He's only homicidal right now—you don't want to see him in a bad mood." He smiled, using a helping of convincing dweeb-ish sincerity and innocence to good advantage. Even more quietly, he whispered, "You see, he doesn't really _cope_ well, even on a good day, when someone tries impeding an investigation. And, when one of his agents is _missing_, well, last time…" He glanced at Gibbs and cleared his throat. "Ah, yes, let's just not go there."

If Miss Ferguson was a poker player, she wasn't a good one. Her bluff didn't even last half a minute—and, really, it was over before then, she just didn't know it. Gibbs spared nothing in the intensity of his scrutiny. It _would_ be the truth this time.

"He said it was a joke," she began, tearfully adamant. "He said Agent DiNozzo was a friend from college he hadn't seen in a while, and that he and some buddies just wanted to pull a prank on him…"

"_Who_?"

"He didn't give a name."

Gibbs hadn't really expected one—not a real name, at any rate. "What did he want you to do?"

"Slip something in Agent DiNozzo's drink," Linda mumbled, literally beginning to wring her hands.

"Did you even bother to ask_ what it was_ before you took the money?" this from a now less than sympathetic McGee.

Gibbs gave McGee a brief, approving glance.

"Of course I asked!" Linda was indignant.

"But he did pay you," Gibbs stated coolly.

Her indignation petered out. "Yes… Yes, I took the money. But I did ask what it was he wanted me to put in the drink, and he said it was just a small dose of sedative." She bit her lower lip and shook her head helplessly. "Look, I'm sorry Agent Gibbs. I know I shouldn't have done it, and I wish to God I could take my actions back now…"

"You might've tried telling us the truth from the beginning, and saved us a trip back here," McGee pointed out. "If you _really_ want to make amends, you could volunteer to make a trip to the Navy Yard and try really hard to remember what this harmless prankster looked like for a sketch artist." Sarcasm wasn't generally McGee's style, but in the heat of his still smoldering temper he thought it worked pretty well in the situation. "After adding in the kidnapping of a federal agent, and then impeding the investigation, I'd be doing everything in my power to make up." In stage whisper, and with a nod at Gibbs, he advised: "Believe me, you want to make him happy right now." And, a little more brightly, to Gibbs: "Getting an I.D. _would_ make you happy, right Boss?"

Gibbs exchanged a wry look with McGee, almost able to conjure a smile at the younger agent's unexpected show of confidence. "_Overjoyed_, Agent McGee."

* * *

Abby pressed the enter key with a vengeance, then sat back and let her loud sigh compete with her abnormally volume-deficient music. Outside, it was a steady drizzle—she could hear the patter faintly, and see the occasional bead of water run down the glass of the small window in her lab. It made her feel like the weather was playing kindred-spirit to her mood; crying, and refusing to let the sun smile on such a depressing, worry-fraught day. It also made her imagination all the more prone to hang on to disquieting thoughts and premonitions.

She'd stayed at her lab overnight, awake doing jobs both real and made up, with only a short nap with Bert to break her activity. Already doing everything Gibbs told her to, and everything else she could think of no matter how far-fetched, she only wished she had _more_ to do.

"Don't worry, Tony…" she spoke quietly, wishing that somehow he could hear her, willing him to know it in his heart, even so, "We're gonna find you, come rain, sleet or—"

"Thinking about joining the Pony Express, Abbs?"

She gave a happy start, a "Gibbs!" and took the offered Caff-Pow, slurping it even more happily. She felt reassured just at the sight of him, looking safe and capable as ever, despite the little worry lines she could see threatening permanent residence above his eyebrows. "They call it the Postal service these days, by the way," she informed him cheerfully.

"You were here all night," Gibbs observed.

"Good detecting." It was fairly obvious, given her rather rumpled state, and the fact that she'd taken her pig-tails down, something she rarely did at work. She felt Gibbs' eyes on her, assessing that, and probably a whole lot more. "Oh, c'mon, Bossman. Going home would've just been silly, since I'd have gotten there, only to wish I was here doing something useful." She paused, and allowed, "Of course, you could argue that I didn't really do anything too useful, even though I _did_ stay. But if that concerned look on your face is you wishing I'd take some care of myself, staying here _was_ taking care of myself, 'cause I feel better having stayed here all night." She took a breath, slowly meeting his amused gaze. "At least a little better. Well, not really better in the physical sense—you know, as in clean, fed, and well-rested. But…better, as in I didn't completely and utterly let Tony down."

"You done?" Gibbs asked—not barked, impatiently, in his you'd-_better_-be-done voice. He really _asked_.

"Yeah," she replied meekly.

He squeezed her shoulder. "You're not letting him down."

"And neither are you," Abby pointed out. Her Gibbs-intuition was spot on, as usual, judging by the shadow that flickered across his face.

"I'll believe that when we have him back."

"And we _will_, 'cause we're way better than the Pony Express. Or the Postal service." Abby grinned at him, not quite feeling that level of faith in herself, but certainly having enough of it in Gibbs to make up for the deficit. "Before you interrupted me, I was actually planning on going a lot further than 'rain, sleet, snow' for _our_ motto…"

"But we're not going there now."

Abby looked at his impervious expression, and mock-pouted. "I'll write it down for you later. After, I show you what I found."

Gibbs moved closer to look over her shoulder.

"Well, first of all, I went over every single fingerprint taken off Tony's car. Got a few partials that aren't his, but," she gave him a glum look, "Tony's prints were overlapping each of them, so it's highly unlikely any of them belong to our villain."

"But you ran them anyways."

"_Of course_, Gibbs," she admonished. Then sighed. "And it looks like the only guests Tony's had in a while are you, me, and McGee." She frowned, considering. "That's really sad when you think about it, actually. I mean, he's always talking about going out with this hot girl, or that hot girl, but when it comes down to it he's always really been a loner."

Gibbs gave her a look.

"Not if we don't let him be a loner. And we _don't_," Abby agreed. "All right, secondly, I've been going over the feed we got from the bar, and there's this guy…" She pulled up the desired window off the start menu, and started the clip rolling. "See him?"

Gibbs just gave her the "no-duh" glance.

"Doesn't he just look villainous? He's got that hawkish look, see? And right there," she emphasized, pointing to the screen, "he ducks his head there, like he's hiding something." In response to Gibbs' exasperation, which she didn't need to see to know it was there, she continued more to-the-point, "Mean looks aside, the guy comes in five minutes after Tony comes in, and leaves two minutes after him, just like clockwork."

"Or a stalker."

"Or a stalker," Abby concurred triumphantly. "Got it scanned into facial recognition, and running through several databases as we speak."

"Good work. Time for some sleep."

"_Gibbs_. You're not supposed to praise someone and punish them in the same breath." She knew that hard look of his well, and relented without too much fuss. "Fine, Bert 'n me'll take another break soon."

"_Home_."

"Geez you run a tough bargain." She spun in her chair, arms crossed, to face him fully. "You'll call, right?"

"The moment we get anything."

"Promise?" Gibbs gave her that hard look again, but she had a look of her own, and knew how to use it. "I'm waiting for your solemn oath," she informed him patiently.

It brought a smile to Gibbs' eyes—she could see it, even under the layers of worry. "Cross my heart and hope to die, Abbs."

She grinned, bouncing out of her chair to plant a quick kiss on his cheek, and called over her shoulder, "Pinky-swear?" She didn't bother to test the limits of his adoration for her by actually attempting it, and almost in the same breath relented not-quite-meekly: "I'll be waiting for that call."

"You'll be _sleeping_."

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: **Cookies and milk to all you wonderful review-senders! :) My wrists are still doing "blah," so I still might not be able to get out too many individual review responses-but it shouldn't be so long a wait between chapters now that I'm back. :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

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"Mr. DiNozzo?"

Tony's reasons for answering were two-fold: firstly the lights came on at a less eye-searing level this time, and, secondly, "Mr. DiNozzo" was a whole lot better than "Sentinel." Who said he couldn't be reasonable? Still, if Avery wanted more than a surly "_What_?" in response, he was going to have to learn to say "Agent."

Besides, those two reasons aside, he was thirsty, and his wrists chafed from his, admittedly futile, squirming against the ropes. And his back hurt from his equally futile attempts to find a comfortable position against the stupid unpadded chair back. That was not a complaint he was about to voice, however—his internal monolog of complaints was beginning to make him sound like an old man.

"Not exactly what we expected in a Sentinel, hmm?" Avery was saying.

"I know, I know, I'm more than most people expect," Tony explained, refusing to be ignored, especially as the conversation starred him. "I'm just special that way."

The second man was looking him up and down, and Tony resented that, and his incredulous look. Geez, he didn't like Avery 'cause he assumed he was a Sentinel, and called him "Sentinel," and he didn't like this guy 'cause he was of the biased view, apparently, that Tony was too mundane to be the freak they were looking for.

"And who's this?" Tony inquired sweetly. Gibbs had taught him that if you wanted to be treated like the boss, you had to act like the boss, and take a dominant role in any questioning. Not that he really felt like he was winning in this particular situation, given his position—namely trussed up, defenseless, and glaring at them with blood-shot eyes, and with at least a day's growth of beard, making him look less than on top of his game.

Avery was only humoring him, not showing him any great respect. "This is my brother, Ron."

"How d'you do, Ronald?" Tony returned politely. "I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. But you can just call me Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. I'd shake your hand, but as you can see my own hands are…indisposed, at the moment. Don't supposed you'd like to help me out with that?"

"Maybe we could find another one," Ron said darkly.

"Ron, I can see already you're not the persevering type," Tony scolded. "I'm really not that bad, though. I just get grouchy when I've been left tied up in a room for hours, without water or food, or any entertainment—not that I'm not saying your brother Tom-Thumb, here, isn't good for a few laughs. But his visits are so rare, and he does like to stick to business."

Ron made a noise of disgust. Avery was getting that mildly depressed look, again. Tony felt inordinately pleased with himself.

Avery was good at come-backs, though, and he cleared his throat. "He is right about perseverance, Ron. We have a lot of work to do—much more than either of us expected. But that simply means we'll have to work harder at it. Sadly, he seems quite untrained."

"Hey, I'm housebroken," Tony interjected. "I do need something to _go_ in, though." At least dehydration was good for something, but he really could have used the head right then.

"We'll start immediately to remedy it," Avery continued to speak one-sidedly to his brother.

"Show me some food, give me some silverware, and I'll show you how well-trained I am," Tony persisted.

"No food until you show some cooperation," Avery barked with a flash of steel in his voice that wasn't quite anger, but definitely unyielding. "Bring him some water, though, Ron."

Scowling all the way, Ron produced a bottle of water from a mini-fridge, uncapped it, and held it up for Tony to take a drink. Tony hesitated, pride making it…well, hard to swallow.

"I can always pry your mouth open and make you," Ron challenged.

"Wanna bet?" Tony returned evenly.

"Drink, Mr. DiNozzo, or perhaps we _will_ find another sentinel."

"I don't know if you've noticed, Avery my man, but this area's Sentinels-R-Us stores are fresh out of stock." Tony tilted his head to one side. "All the other Sentinels are on back-order, so I'd get on that list fast."

"It's for your own good," Avery said, indicating the water bottle Ron held, ignoring what Tony thought was a very witty and valid point.

"Fine." Tony eyed the bottle, then allowed Ron to feed him like a baby, tipping his head back and gulping the water. It was cold, and wonderful—but Ron just had to keep on pouring, without pause, down to the last drop. Tony was choking and gagging by the end, and the dregs ended up running down his chin and neck, seeping into the front of his shirt. He gave Ron a wrathful look as he caught his breath. "Next time remember I prefer Aquafina. Or better yet, something with bubbles. And none of that discount stuff. I can tell the difference."

"No doubt, with your heightened sense of taste," Avery mused.

"_Superior _sense of taste," Tony bragged, "but not in the way you're talkin'."

"You're going to learn have to curb that smart mouth of yours quick," Ron said snidely.

Tony was sure Avery number two had his own, unique characteristics. He had darker blond hair than his brother, a shorter nose, and no glasses, but other than that Tony was primarily aware of a lot of smugness, and he thought it was most unbecoming, giving him a much less refined air then Avery number one. He had a mind to tell Ronald that, too, but he curbed his smart mouth just to prove that he could.

"Ron, have a seat," Avery instructed, and his brother obeyed, still looking grouchy, but Tony felt he was probably entitled to most of the credit for that. "We will begin by testing your hearing on a small scale."

"You know, you keep saying 'we,' and that really implies group effort. Maybe you and Ron are together on this, but the 'we' you're talking about seems—somehow—to include _me_. Kinda presumptuous of you, if you ask me."

Avery's expression stated clearly that, presumptuous or not, he hadn't asked Tony, and he didn't _care_ to. And the royal 'we' would remain. "We'll limit it to this room only."

He was circling Tony slowly, and Tony didn't like how the movement placed Avery intermittently in his blind spot. He felt like one of the poor suckers in interrogation, frying under Gibbs' silent observation, as the agent paced around them, tiger-like. Only Avery wasn't half so scary, making enduring this a milk run by comparison. Yeah, he'd just keep telling himself that.

"I will begin moving further away now," Avery was saying, sotto-voice. "But I will continue speaking, and I wish you to listen, and keep your attention fixed on me, extending your sense of hearing as I move to the other side of the room."

Tony snorted his opinion of that idea. However, as Avery continued speaking, he decided he might as well listen in. No harm in doing that, when it might provide more information on the state of the whacko's mind—and he didn't have to tell _them_ he was listening in. Though the room was fairly large, even for his amateur Sentinel skills fixing in on a whisper from that distance wasn't a difficult feat. There weren't many distractions, and he was even able to multitask, fixing Ron with a smug look of his own—which would have included crossed arms had he been able—and absently tuned in to what Tom Avery was saying.

"A Sentinel is supposed to be first, and foremost, concerned with the welfare of his 'tribe,'" he was whispering. As Tony concentrated on his words, his rhythmical footfalls also came into sharper focus in his hearing. He was able to keep it all at a comfortable level, reveling a little in his control. "A Sentinel is an advantage against any danger a tribe may encounter. Their job is to dedicate themselves to meeting those dangers, and preventing them—and doing all they are capable of to ensure the tribe is secure."

Avery had reached the far end of the room now. Tony had tracked his progress mostly by hearing, but also out of the corner of his eye.

Voice as quiet as before, Avery stopped with his back to Tony, and instructed, "Sentinel, if you can hear me, answer."

Tony kept his mouth firmly closed. The sudden, high-pitched, shrill noise sliced through his brain, shattering his control. He cried out, straining against his bonds, instinctively trying to reach up and cover his ears. The noise stopped. The echo of it continued in reverberations that, though pale by comparison to the original noise, continued to tease the pain already thundering against his ear-drums.

He knew what the sound was, the imprint of this particular pain something he'd never wanted to feel again. The last time, though, he'd had a voice to call him out, bring him out of the spiral of helpless, unexpected pain and confusion. There was no helping voice this time, and his mind groped blindly for the hearing dial, automatically blocking out physical sight by clenching his eyes shut, even if sight weren't the actual offending sense.

"Sentinel…"

When he found a voice to latch on to, it was far from familiar, or welcome. Avery didn't sound apologetic, but he did sound concerned. Tony told him exactly where he could go, and clenched his teeth hard against the loudness of his own voice.

"I only meant to—"

"_Shut up_," Tony growled, this time softly enough that it almost didn't drive renewed spikes of agony through his brain. He squinted his eyes open just a crack—and there it was, the instrument of torture itself. A simple silver whistle, no longer than a man's index finger. A dog whistle. Were it in his power, Tony would've ripped it off the chain it was attached to, where it hung around Avery's neck so casually and innocently. Tony closed his eyes again and, not caring how pathetic it sounded, moaned, "OhGodthathurt…"

Though Avery hadn't gone so far as to take a trip to the destination Tony had advised, he did shut up. For a while.

"Are you recovered?" Avery's voice came quietly.

"_No_," Tony responded petulantly. In truth, it was no longer unbearable. He would have a headache for a while, though, and he hated Avery's guts—every last internal organ, and then some. His was the last voice on earth to sooth him at that moment, but he'd contain himself enough to keep from crying for his Guide like a little kid. Er, Sentinel. He was all grown up now.

"You brought it upon yourself," Avery scolded, as if he _were_ a child. "If you'd given up pretending sooner, I wouldn't have needed to force you to admit your abilities through such…extreme methods."

"Go to—"

"Yes, you've already said that. No need to be redundant; I know your opinion of me. Let me warn you, however, Sentinel: I will not tolerate such a level of disrespect for long. I will make a few allowances to begin with, seeing as how this is an unexpected change for you." Both stern and mildly sympathetic, Avery finished with the addendum, "But you must be willing to learn."

"Well I'm not," Tony retorted bluntly, more petulant than before. "I don't have to listen to you, you're not my Guide." He decided sticking out his tongue would have been a bit over the top.

"This isn't going to work," Ron spoke up from his seat.

Avery shot him a censuring look for interrupting, before circling around Tony again. "Sentinel, I would think this incident would have taught you to cooperate a little more. It would make things so much easier."

"I don't want to make things easier. I thrive in the face of a challenge. How about you?"

Avery ignored his question. "Perhaps, if you told us who your Guide was…"

Tony didn't deign to answer that. His glower was hard and meaningful. The day he gave this man Gibbs' name in connection with his own Sentinel abilities, which this man seemed determined to exploit… Well, that day was not comin', _ever_, if Tony could help it.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Avery guessed, correctly. "Well, we'll just have to discover the identity of your Guide for ourselves, then. I need some time to think." He leaned in close. "And you, Sentinel, should consider your own attitude very closely."

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: No replies to the lovely reviews, a short-ish chapter... Meh. ::iz a bad author:: M'sorry. You're a wonderful audience. :) At least it hasn't been a ten day wait, right? (And it shouldn't be a ten day wait for more, either, yays!) **

**Reviews are much, much love. :D**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

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Abby had dreamt about Tony.

As consciousness slowly crept upon her, she didn't remember the details so much as the _feel_ of it. The worry of it and the futility of her own desire to help him lingered foremost, and she didn't want to reach for full consciousness before she was sure she _wanted_ to be awake. What if it hadn't been a dream?

In her dream, she thought maybe someone had been drowning Tony, but she couldn't be sure. It had been something bad. She'd been watching the terrible thing—whatever it was—happen to him, and her feet had been, literally, super-glued to the ground. She couldn't budge her feet, and for some reason the buckles on her platform shoes wouldn't open, either. She'd had her cell-phone in her hand. As she'd opened it to call for help—_Gibbs_—she'd had a panicky moment where she thought she might've forgotten to charge the battery. But it turned out she had charged it.

_But_, of course, there wasn't any phone service. She'd just had to stand there, and Tony hadn't been breathing, and they'd—

"Abby? Abby, wake up."

They—the people hurting Tony—had been laughing. She'd yelled some stuff, but they didn't listen, no matter how colorful or explicit she was about what she was going to do to them. And no one else came to help. Maybe she'd been on the wrong side of one of those one-way mirrors from interrogation: looking in on something unspeakably awful, but powerless to even be heard, and without the keys to open the door, even if she could've moved.

"_Abby_."

She opened her eyes. Not because she really had a choice, but because the person to whom the insistent voice belonged was also shaking her. The shaking wasn't rough, but it was enough to ruin her suspended awareness, tentative as it had been.

It turned out to only be Tony, his face hovering into view above her, expression concerned. "Tony…" she began with annoyance. Then she realized it was _Tony_. Alive Tony, not drowning, dead, or otherwise in need of help. He was asking her if _she_ was all right. With a relieved exclamation of his name, she flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.

"Good to see you, too." Tony's voice was muffled, a little tight sounding.

"Are you okay?"

"M'having just a bit of trouble…breathing."

Abby eased back immediately, but kept her hands on his shoulders, examining him.

He smiled one of his easy smiles. "Now I'm good."

The dream might not have been real, but Abby suddenly remembered what _was _real. Last she recalled, Tony hadn't been drowning, but he had been in danger of another kind.

"Oh, thank God, we've found you! Gibbs was just frantic. At least on the _inside_ I know he was. I could tell, even if he was trying not to scare me by showing it. He's always like that, even if you already _know_. And I thought—"

"Um, hate to break it to you, Abbs," Tony interrupted, "but I'm not really found. I mean, _you_ found me…sort of. But I'm afraid _we_ need finding now."

That boyish grin was still on his face, but Abby could see fatigue, and a kinda pinched edge to the expression. He was probably trying not to scare her, just like how Gibbs tried to protect her from what he was really feeling sometimes—and it was just as ridiculous for Tony to try, 'cause neither of their acts had worked on her in a long time.

She was more in tune with her surroundings now, and she realized she was nowhere familiar. It wasn't her lab, or Tony's apartment, or Gibbs' house, or hers, or even the hospital… She was sitting on some sort of cot, with Tony seated on the edge beside her, and beyond Tony's head there were bars. Like prison bars…or a cage.

"Yeah, we're not in Kansas anymore," Tony quipped, without his usual bravado. "God only knows where we _are_, though. You all right?"

Abby brushed off his concern, swinging her legs over the side of the cot. "Who's got us?"

Tony gave her a look that was about as vulnerable, apologetic, and miserable as she'd ever seen him show. "I'm sorry, Abby. This is my fault," he gave a humorless laugh, "in more than one way." He forestalled her protests with a raised hand. "The guy who has us, he knows I'm a Sentinel. I don't know how, but he does, and…well, I wasn't as cooperative as he thought I'd be. So it guess he decided I needed someone to persuade me."

"Well they did get the right person when it comes to persuasion…" Abby allowed.

"Abby," Tony glanced around, and lowered his voice to a whisper, "they think you're my Guide."

"Oh…" Creepy as it was to think that someone had, apparently, been observing her, there was something that she liked about the idea of someone considering her close enough to Tony that they might draw that conclusion. "Guess I'm a pretty good 'keeper,' huh?"

Tony sighed. "You don't get it, Abby. You wouldn't _be_ here if it wasn't for all this stupid Sentinel stuff."

Abby couldn't help herself. Sometimes he could be so infuriatingly dense. "You need to get your head on straight about something, Mister." As if to physically demonstrate the carrying out of such an act, she reached out gently, but firmly, place a hand on either side of his face, and turn it so his eyes met hers. "You being a Sentinel is not stupid, and if you say it is again, I _will_ hurt you."

"Oh yeah?" Tony taunted.

"Oh yeah," she returned levelly, and was satisfied to see him gulp.

He rose, paced away a step, and then turned back, looking restless. "It's just…look where all of this has gotten you."

Abby did look. Their "cage" was within a larger room—a bare, unremarkable room with bare walls and an empty table and three chairs. The smaller area they were confined in had concrete flooring, two cots, including the one she was situated on, and nothing else. The bars were only on three sides, with the fourth being adjoined to the wall of the outer room. From their cell, there was a door in the wall, but Abby could catch sight of the toilet and sink crammed into that small space.

"I have woken up in better places," Abby admitted. "But I've seen worse, too."

Tony gave her a curious look. "Like?"

"The point is, Tony, I'm happy to be here."

"You're…happy."

"Well, I'd much rather I'd _saved_ you, of course, but being here for you is the next best thing."

Tony gave a groan and covered his eyes. "Great. You're going willingly to your possible death. I feel so much better now. I'm sure our captor will be relieved to hear _you're_ in a more cooperative frame of mind."

"On the contrary, my cynical Sentinel." She crossed her arms, eyes narrowed in wrath that was only a little exaggerated. "Just you wait until I get my hands on this guy."

Tony snorted softly, smiling. "If they've got mics on us, I just know he's shaking in his boots right now."

"Better be. What's this guy done to you? You look all worn out."

"Just a dog whistle," Tony murmured.

It took her sharp eye and Tony know-how to catch the flash of remembered pain in his eyes. She gave a "grrr" of anger.

Tony gave her an odd look, maybe a little amused, and added, "What, Abbs? It was for training purposes. You wouldn't want a badly trained Sentinel on your hands, would you?"

"I like my Tony just the way he is!" she exclaimed earnestly, and grit out in the next breath, "_Oh_. That man is so dead. What did he _do_ to you?"

"Like I said, he, ah…whistled at me. With the dog whistle. To get my attention." Tony was too casual about it.

"What does he want with you?" Abby asked quietly.

Tony shook his head. "Don't really know. Doesn't seem to think 'the Sentinel' needs to know yet."

She didn't like the sounds of any of this talk of 'whistles,' and 'training,' and 'the Sentinel.' Not at all. She stood and put a hand on shoulder, and asked suspiciously, "Did he call you a freak?"

"Freak?" Tony's smile was, again, too-easy to Abby's trained eye. "Nah, he didn't have to _say_ it."

Abby knew a lot of ways to kill. She only wondered how she was going to beat Gibbs to it.

* * *

If Gibbs had been impossible to live with before, now he was…a terror. Ziva really didn't think she was being melodramatic at all. He was truly going ballistic before their very eyes.

You had to know him well to really see all that was at play, here. He wasn't just mad, or having a _really_ bad day, though both of those were also true. He was really, really…really mad, and everyone in a close proximity was sharing in his bad day, as if his anger were some sort of fast-working, airborne virus, infecting everyone he came in contact with.

But Ziva knew beyond a doubt his furiously driven pace in finding Tony and Abby was full of a myriad of motives. Those two had a special claim on his protection. Almost from the moment she'd joined NCIS, she could see that Abby had taken something of a place in his heart as surrogate daughter. She had unique privileges in her relationship with Gibbs; the freedom to say things none of them could get away with. As for Tony…well, any feelings of friendship, partner loyalty, or paternal affection completely aside, Tony was his _Sentinel_.

Gibbs was angry _and_ feeling guilty. It didn't help that he'd been the one to tell Abby to go get some rest, and she'd been taken on her way home to do just that. It was no use reminding Gibbs that, if not on that particular errand, then the people who'd kidnapped Abby probably would've just taken her some other time. He couldn't have known. Such attempts always ended with Gibbs glaring his would-be comforter down, turning Ziva quiet, and sending McGee regressing temporarily back to his insecure, babbling days of probationary status.

Ziva and McGee had put their heads together several times since Tony went missing, and now brain-stormed even more often since Abby had disappeared. They'd joined in unspoken alliance, both comrades in weathering the storm of Gibbs' wrath, and in scurrying for answers that would lead them to their missing friends. The second problem was, obviously, the antidote to the first, but was proving difficult, especially as they were both one agent short, and now Abby-less as well. Even from an all-business standpoint, Gibbs was _not_ doing well without his forensic genius. And Ziva could tell that even McGee was feeling the absence of Tony's stress-reducing ability to goof off come hell, high water, or serial killer. Or abductor.

If Abby had the magic hug, or kiss on the cheek, that could make the world look brighter, Tony had the ability to be so aggravatingly _juvenile_ as to deflect bad tempers and bring grudging laughter. Ziva had suspected more than once that his sometimes over-the-top bouts of acting out both played the part of chosen public image—and also were his way of telling them all to just lighten up a little. It was either care about victims, or purposely harden yourself against it. But in choosing to care, when dealing with tragic events was part of your everyday job description, you still couldn't let it affect you to the degree that it crippled you.

They were all undergoing withdrawal right now, feeling just how gaping a wound was left in their team's dynamics without Tony or Abby around.

Rubbing her temples with forefingers, elbows leaning on her desk, Ziva concentrated on the screen of her computer, trying to convince herself that yes, that last cup of coffee _was_ taking effect. The words kept blurring. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to blink away the blurriness, then glanced across the bullpen at McGee. The other agent was also blinking at his screen, looking comically owlish. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, eyes meeting hers, smiling tiredly.

"You have found something?" Ziva asked, without any real hope. He would have been much more animated had he discovered something, and he would not be waiting around to be asked before volunteering the information.

"No. Not yet."

"I have not, either," she said, without any real point. Having a rational conversation, however fleeting, was a small mercy amid much jumping to Gibbs' demands with "Yes Boss"s that their boss rarely stayed long enough to catch before he was off again on some other mission.

"You think, perhaps, we should go look for him?"

"Maybe we should go look for him?"

They both chuckled as they realized they'd spoken simultaneously.

McGee cleared his throat. "Yeah, it's just, he has been gone a while…"

"He may have found something, but forgotten to charge his phone—I tried calling him, but he is not answering."

"Or he might've…lost it."

Smashed it was more likely, Ziva thought, given his mood. Actually, phone-smashing was an art Gibbs had perfected which didn't require a foul mood.

"I agree. We should go see if he's down with Ducky, perhaps."

McGee nodded his assent and rose to follow her lead. As they entered the elevator, Ziva considered their actions, which were really a little pathetic when you thought about it. They spent most of their days being barked at by Gibbs, and the first half-hour reprieve they were handed they spent looking for Gibbs so he could bark at them some more.

But Ziva guessed McGee's motives were similar to her own. Firstly, even if they'd rather die a slow death than admit it to Gibbs (and they might die just such a death if they _did_), they were both wondering what their boss might do in his current frame of mind. If he did go homicidal, they wanted to be there to help, even if all that was left them to do was covering up the forensic evidence. Secondly, the hole in their team was already big enough. If she had to put a word to it—and she knew neither she nor McGee would be verbalizing it—they were both undergoing the rather _clingy_ need to stick together. Three, total, with no Abby to visit, was a difficult adjustment. Just the two of them sitting there made it impossible to avoid being reminded of just how glaringly _wrong _it was, and even a seething Gibbs was infinitely better. You didn't survive on Gibbs' team if you had a fear of Gibbs that went beyond a healthy and natural awe. Yes, Ziva would go so far as to say his presence was reassuring right then.

So, odd as it might sound to an outsider, she and McGee were both seeking out their currently ferocious, glowering, and entirely unappeasable boss, even knowing that he would continue to be so until they found Tony and Abby. They were both pigs… No, "pigs" was not the word she was looking for. _Gluttons_. They were both gluttons for punishment—but, then, you did not survive on Gibbs' team unless you were dysfunctional, to some degree, as well.

Ducky was sewing up a cadaver when they entered, looking up briefly as the door slid open and offering them his usual welcoming smile. It was looking a bit worn around the edges, in Ziva's opinion.

"I wasn't aware you were working any case that might involve a call on autopsy." Still halting in his work, he glanced searchingly between the two of them. "This isn't about the other issue, is it?"

Whether he meant a Sentinel issue, or a general update on Tony and Abby wasn't clear.

"If you'd rather I…um, go…" Palmer inserted, hovering uncertainly beside Ducky. Though Palmer had been let in on the basic facts of Tony's new abilities, he didn't have a thorough knowledge of all the details, and had shown a great deal of tact in excusing himself when Gibbs or any of his team came around to talk with Ducky.

"That is not necessary," Ziva assured. "We merely came in search of Gibbs."

"Well, I'm afraid you won't have much luck on that particular mission here. Jethro seems to have been avoiding me these last few days." Ducky sighed, expression decidedly worried. "I know he's busy, but I would appreciate more frequent updates." Voice lowered confidentially, he added, "And not just on the search for Anthony and Abigail, I'm rather—"

"Worried about me, Duck?" Gibbs finished, breezing into the room with his impeccable timing.

"_Yes_, Jethro, as a matter of fact I _do_ worry about you with some frequency." As an aside to Jimmy: "Here, Mr. Palmer, would you finish seeing to this young man for me?"

"Sure thing, Doctor Mallard." Palmer took over readily.

"What're you two doing down here?" Gibbs asked, not quite angry-sounding. That tone of voice could be deceptive, though.

"Ah, we were actually looking for…you," McGee answered.

Gibbs eyed them critically, but didn't comment. It was obvious they hadn't been looking for him because they had any special news. "Miss Fabian has something for us down in forensics," his cool tone didn't even attempt to make the name, in conjunction with "forensics," sound anything but foreign.

"Right, Boss," Ziva and McGee said at once.

Removing his gloves, Ducky added, "I will be there shortly."

Candice Fabian's only noticeable fault was that she wasn't Abby.

Of course, there was no way McGee could know for sure that she'd been at all like her normal self since she'd come to temporarily fill in for Abby. Gibbs was, after all, breathing down her neck. So far, though, apart from a certain understandable flightiness, the woman was perfectly capable in her ability to keep up with the fast-paced work. She was no _Abby_, but she was good at what she did. Perhaps it would have been better if they'd sent a man, though. Sexist as it would have sounded to say it, something told McGee that, despite the lack of physical resemblance between the Goth and this petite blond, it didn't help that she was a _she_. It was just… a little too much like attempting to replace her.

McGee had to admit, it did feel like a disloyalty to their coworker to let another woman touch Abby's beloved machines. It was a necessary evil, however, if they were going to get Abby back.

Gibbs had so far strictly stuck to referring to their new lab-monkey by her surname.

They were all gathered, Ducky included. Fabian, however, had eyes only for whatever it was that she was peering at through the microscope.

She had heard their approach, and held up a finger. "Just a second, I'll—"

"_Fabian_."

That was the Gibbs tone that was not to be ignored. Well…technically Gibbs didn't possess a tone that, advisably, could be ignored.

McGee inwardly applauded the speed with which her head whipped around.

"Oh, Agent Gibbs. Sorry. I was working on something for another—" She stopped herself, eyes traversing the row of people that had suddenly invaded the lab and widening slightly. "But you're here for _your_ case." She made a nervous "heh" noise, as if testing the waters to see if anyone might join in on an ice-breaking chuckle.

McGee felt for her, almost enough to comply. Almost. However, with Gibbs staring daggers at the situation in general, he toned his response back to bestowing her with a kind smile. It _was_ admittedly a little grating, to have someone sitting in Abby's chair being so _deferential_ to them, and to Gibbs in particular. Not that Fabian could get away with even a quarter—or a tenth, or maybe less—of the cheerful waywardness that Abby could. Scratch that: if she tried to do much more than squeak and scurry under his command, she was going to feel the true displeasure of Gibbs.

Fabian definitely took more time to "start up" than Abby, but at least once she was on track some of her fear seemed to recede in deference to forensic glee. "You'll love this. I ran every last print taken off Miss Sciuto's abandoned car, and I found a partial print on the roof of the car where someone must've rested their hand—perhaps while stopping to talk to the driver of the car through the window." She turned to the computer, clicking the right screen up. "Our 'someone' turns out to be _him_."

McGee's first impressions of the man in the photo were of pale skin, a small nose, and neatly combed brown hair.

"Agent Gibbs, meet Mr. Edward Collins, your new suspect." A smile stretched across Fabian's round face—she was entitled to a little pride "Although Mr. Collins is an employee of NCIS, and Miss Sciuto might well have been acquainted with him through that obvious connection, apparently Mr. Collins hasn't shown up for work since Miss Sciuto disappeared. Sounds a little fishy if you ask me."

"I do not believe it…"

Everyone turned to look at Ziva who was staring in disbelief at the photo.

Ducky voiced the question for them all, "What is it, my dear?"

"It's Nerdy Ned," she murmured, amending absently for their benefit, "Tony's name for him, not mine." It wasn't often you caught Ziva wide-eyed with surprise.

Gibbs was looking about as pleased as he'd looked since Tony's disappearance. Pleased, in a grim, blood-thirsty way. Undoubtedly, he would be asking Ziva more questions later, but for now he had a new course of action. There was no "Good job" of the sort he always gave Abby, but Ducky did bestow a polite, "Thank you, Miss Fabian."

Gibbs only said, "Ziva, McGee, with me."

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: **Thanks so much, everyone, for the continued wonderfulness in reviews! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6  
**

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In the hours they'd kept each other company, Tony kept searching Abby's face—surreptitiously, he hoped—for any signs of distress. It was only natural she'd be anxious about the circumstances she'd found herself in, but, actually, she seemed genuinely cheerful.

Tony liked to think he was getting pretty good at reading people, especially his "family" of coworkers, but he was at a loss to discover how—why—his new cellmate was so completely relaxed about things. It made him feel worse. Not that he _wanted_ her to be worried.… It was just that she had every right to be furious with him, and furious with their predicament in general, and she _wasn't_. Trust Abby to take things in stride.

The two of them were sitting on the floor of their little cell, backs against the bars, shoulders touching. It was a position they'd both chosen without discussion; a kind of petty gesture of insubordination. No, they would _not_ sit on the cots provided. They hadn't been provided with honest-to-God chairs, so they'd just sit on the floor, and who cared if the painted cement froze their butts. Actually…it had really been too cold, until Abby had whipped one of the blankets off the bed, folding it into an impromptu cushion for the two of them. No need to let rebellion lead to actual pneumonia.

"You sure you don't want another blanket?" Abby asked.

Tony made a face. "I knew I shouldn't've told you about the dog whistle. It hurt my ears, not my immune system. I'm not an invalid."

"But you did have the plague…"

"Years ago."

"But you said you had a headache." Abby could out-persist the most persistent. She was Olympic at it.

"I've survived a few of them in my time."

"But your eyes look all bloodshot and tired."

"Abby…"

"And I think you're shivering a little." She'd jumped up, procured a second blanket and, sitting back down again, forcibly tucked it around his shoulders and her own. "There. Much better." But she was still obsessing, true to Abby form. Her lips drew together in a thin line of consideration. "Maybe you should just sit on the bed. It's still kinda cold down here…"

"Studies show that people who sit around in bed before their bed time are more prone to insomnia."

"The article _I_ read just mentioned sitting in bed watching TV or reading. You'd be _relaxing_." When he didn't have a comeback for that, Abby gave him a rather expectant look, as if his decision not to argue the point made her the obvious champion of the conversation. "You do look all worn out."

"I'm not sleepy, honest, Mom."

"I'd make you look and see for yourself just how sleepy you look, if there was a mirror in the bathroom."

"Don't make me give _you_ a nap," Tony warned without heat.

"I thought I was the mom."

"Who's the Special Agent, here?" Sheesh, if Avery was listening on this, he was probably getting mighty dizzy from their merry-go-round of a conversation. That was a cheering thought. What was more, Tony couldn't remember when he'd last had this much time on his hands to have a thorough argument with Abby. He'd forgotten how fun it was.

"Yeah? Well…" Abby paused to think, then played the ace, "I'm Gibbs' favorite."

"Mmm..." Tony leaned his head back against the bars with an exaggerated huff of defeat. "You have a point there."

"Aww, Tony," she jostled his shoulder with her own, voice full of compassion for her subdued opponent, "we're probably tied. I'm just his favorite in one way, and you're his favorite in another. He wouldn't hit you and a remind you to _get your act together_," this in Abby's Gibbs' voice, "if he didn't love you lots."

Now Avery's brains just had to be scrambled if he was trying to follow. Or maybe, if he knew so much about them already, he knew something of their team's unconventional way of relating to each other.

Abby was still rambling her assurances of Gibbs' fatherly affection for him when Tony remembered something. He needed to broach a certain subject before Avery paid them his next visit, and he needed to keep it quiet enough that any mics wouldn't pick it up. He leaned in close to Abby's ear, "Um, Abbs… There's something we need to talk about."

Taking his cue, she whispered back, tone purposefully sultry, "Yes, Tony, dear?"

He smirked. Apparently Peeping Avery was about to come to the conclusion that, for them, the Guide-Sentinel relationship was _not_ platonic in nature. It was a good idea, giving this, and any other necessary whisper-conferences, a credible cover. He looped a hand around her waist, giving her a wink, and a soft, meaningful, "You're a good Guide, love."

She looked startled only briefly at the revelation. "You want me to pretend I'm your Guide?"

"I'm not letting them come to the conclusion you're of no use to me. We need them to need _you_. That's why they brought you, to keep the Sentinel in line."

She rested her chin on his shoulder. "I dunno, Tony…"

"Oh, c'mon, Abbs. I trust you."

Showing the first signs of worry since she'd been landed in the situation, Abby protested quietly, "I'm not _Gibbs_."

"Don't expect you to be," Tony assured her.

Miserable, and a little narrow-eyed, she said sullenly, "I'm not gonna cooperate, and go along with things, while they make you do things that could hurt you."

"We might not have a choice." She looked scared now, and Tony hated it, especially since he knew she wasn't scared for herself. She was scared for _him_. Feeling inordinately protective as he saw emotion building in her expressive eyes, he gave her a kiss on the forehead—it could only help maintain the image they were going for, here. "Hey. It's going to be fine. Believe me, if Gibbs would loan his Sentinel to anyone, it would be to you."

Abby could look quite fierce when she wanted to. "Tony," she hissed, "you're not a rental, or something. Gibbs is as much your Guide as you're his Sentinel." Her expression crumpled into uncertainty. "It's just, I don't want to…mess up. Gibbs always knows the right thing to say."

Tony had to chuckle at that, and she jabbed a fist into his stomach, not hard, but with the clearly impatient intent to prompt a straight explanation.

"_What_?"

"Funny, in my book Gibbs _and_ Abby always have all the answers."

A door banged open and shut not far away, and they instinctively straightened, Tony shrugging off the blanket and gaining his feet. As expected, it was Avery and Avery-the-younger who entered a moment later, but they also had two new additions with them. Tony didn't need two guesses to figure out their function in the upcoming tête-à-tête. Neither of them was quite Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they had muscle, and hard expressions that said "lead on, we follow," and didn't offer to force too much creative thought of their own upon their noble leader. Besides that, there were unconcealed guns at their waists.

Goon number one—as Tony mentally tagged the guy with the short-cropped sandy hair—pulled his gun out to level it casually at them, while Goon number two—hair darker and not so high 'n tight—unlocked the door to their cell. The Averys stood to the side, the elder with arms crossed, the younger with hostile look intact.

The last thing Tony was expecting was to suddenly find his line of vision blocked by Abby. He _should_ have expected it, though.

Hands on hips, she demanded of Avery, "I want some answers before we go anywhere with you, Mister."

Thomas Avery looked extremely amused, but also a little _bemused _as he examined Abby up and down with something akin to wonder. "I can still hardly believe that you are his Guide." He glanced between her and Tony with raised eyebrow, "Guide…and something more?"

So Tony'd been right about the mics. He put a hand on Abby's shoulder, wishing she'd back down, and responded to the insinuation with a low-spoken, "None of your business."

Avery shrugged. "I don't care, of course. Though it is to my advantage."

Head titled in a cocky "bite-me" gesture, Abby retorted, "I am so not your advantage."

Tony jerked a little on her shoulder, but she had her platform-shoe-clad feet firmly planted.

Not that the impervious Thomas was by any means upset. He was maddeningly patient. He gave Goon number one a meaningful look, and his gun, which had been on Abby, shifted to Tony. He smiled cordially at Abby. "I would not kill him, my dear, but I would hurt him, and I know you don't want that. It would impede things to have to get him medical attention."

"You—"

"_Abby_," Tony cut her off, hand gripping her shoulder very hard now. Now was not the time or place for this. Rebellion had been much more attractive with just himself taking the risk. They couldn't make a move now, not with their captors on guard like this.

Abby seemed to understand but, predictably, was still beyond frustrated with the situation as she let Tony pull her back a little, and to his side.

Ron seemed to have grown too disgusted with the confrontation to stand it, and had taken a seat at the nearby table. Tom gestured for the two of them to step out of the cell, and then ushered them towards the table as well. "Have a seat."

They did, and having done so without a fuss, Tony thought it more than a little rude of the Goons to promptly bring out handcuffs and secure their left wrists to the arms of their chairs. It was probably Abby's murderous expression making them nervous.

Avery gave another meaningful look, this time to Goon two, who left the room with a nod.

Avery then took his place at the opposite side of the table from Abby and Tony. "Now, Miss Sciuto, let us clear up a few things as to how we are going to proceed with the Sentinel—"

"—He is not 'the Sentinel;' he's Special Agent DiNozzo."

"Technicalities," Avery looked sternly at Abby. Tony was struck by how very much he reminded him of a teacher he'd once had—no matter how many times Tony'd goofed off, the guy had always seemed surprised, even shocked, at his behavior. Some people just never learned.

"Well," Abby responded, tone brittle, "if Tony's going to be classified like that, then I'm going to be _the Guide_."

School Master Thomas was using the same "reasonable" tone on Abby that'd he'd been trying, to little effect, on Tony, ever since he'd arrived. "Miss Sciuto, though you have a natural skill for handling Sentinels, you are not one yourself. As a matter of fact, I would prefer it we dropped the 'Guide' terminology altogether, as I believe it's a bit…antiquated. There may or may not be people predisposed in ability and knowledge to train Sentinels, but it seems rather archaic to assume that such people are somehow genetically wired to be the one-and-only choice for the role. Simply because there _are_ Sentinels, as Sir Richard Burton theorized, it does not follow that everything he theorized upon is true. No doubt, any bond you imagine yourself to share with this Sentinel is primarily an attraction of another, more common, nature." When Abby looked ready to burst out with a few choice R-rated words, Avery held up a finger and interrupted, voice turning unexpectedly threatening, "_Aht_, Miss Sciuto, you may stick to your own beliefs. It is of no matter to me. But, you _will _give me your full cooperation in this, or else I may have to do as my brother's suggested, and simply abandon the hope of getting _this_ Sentinel," he pointed to Tony, "to be of any use to me. In which case, I will need neither of you. Do not consider yourselves indispensable. And, if you refuse to keep your outbursts to yourself, a gag is always an option for you, Miss Sciuto. However, that arrangement would only be harmful to the Sentinel, as your purpose for _being here_ is to help him."

Tony could see Abby bite back the words, physically biting her lower lip with the effort to stow it. He cleared his throat, and raised his hand. "Uh, may _the Sentinel_ say something?"

"Speak," Avery allowed dryly.

Tony was tempted to obediently bark at the command—and offer to do his play-dead trick, too—but decided not to set Abby a bad example. He was loath to say what he had to, but forced the words out for Abby's sake. "I'll be a good little Sentinel, on the condition that you don't touch a hair of her head."

"Only your behavior has made her presence necessary at all. If you cease to hinder my plans, you'll find me perfectly reasonable. I'm not _looking_ for a reason to harm either of you."

A glib "How very reassuring" was on the tip of Tony's tongue, but at that moment Goon-on-an-errand returned carrying a large box, which he set down next to Avery's chair.

Of all things, Avery produced an opaque, blue…Tupperware container. And then another one. He silently went about lining them up on the table until there were six of them in total, all identical, square containers with lids.

"All right, I have to ask…what's in them?"

The silent Ron spoke up to answer Tony, "That's what you're gonna tell _us_."

"Ron," Tony cocked his head at the man, "you really need to work on that smile of yours." He made a wincing, sympathetic face—in the course of it showing off his own dazzling set of white teeth—and revised, "Wait, lemme guess, working through some self-image issues? No money for braces as a child?"

Brother Tom cleared his throat before little brother could get well and truly riled. "We will begin with something easy." He removed the lid from the container on his far right, and slid it forward until it was in the middle of the table, only a foot or so from Tony.

"We'll start with some common things, some with stronger scents and others with weaker, to establish a sort of baseline."

Tony could just see white…something.

"Use your sense of smell, and identify it," Avery instructed.

Abby was watching him, fingers wrapped tightly around the arm of the chair. He gave her a quick look that, he hoped, told her he was good to go on this one. Even for him, it was a cake walk, smelling something at so short a distance.

Closing his eyes, he took a moment to mentally relax, and inhaled deeply. He turned the required dial up just a notch. Now that he was paying attention, there was new-construction smell to the room—of fresh paint and stirred up dust—and there was also the smell of… He paused, cracking open an eye, commented, "I smell Kung Pao chicken."

Far from looking displeased at his diversion for the task at hand, Avery bestowed on him the broadest smile he'd displayed so far. "_Excellent_. Several rooms over, in fact. You shall eat once we are finished here."

Despite his long-empty stomach's complaining, Tony gave Avery a superior look that was far from groveling for the promised reward. He was doing this to ensure Abby's safety, not 'cause he was some performing circus animal. He focused his attention back on the white substance in front of him, and it wasn't hard to pick up. "Sugar," he pronounced after a second.

"Good, good." Avery switched the container, covering it, and opening another.

The sugar was followed by salt, then flour. Then he encountered a more complicated case; the first scent that caught his attention was intense enough to make him wrinkle his nose. He forced himself to stay on it, though. "More than one thing," he commented, "Oregano, and…" the second scent made him pull back altogether, sneezing helplessly a few times before shaking his head and finishing, with irritation, "Sage." He'd never liked the smell of sage much. He'd had a girlfriend whose décor had largely consisted of candles of every shape and size, and those mini indoor herb garden things; a romantic evening at her apartment had been curtailed when one of her potted sage plants had caught on fire. Burnt sage smelled amazingly similar to marijuana. Even un-incinerated, it wasn't Tony's favorite smell.

Avery put a lid on that one, and presented him his fifth task. Only one more to go after this. He glanced at the dark substance, and concentrated.

The first waft that hit Tony made him smile inwardly at the much more pleasant connotations it brought to mind. Heaven forbid he ever actually mention it, but—especially in recent times, since his Sentinel abilities had come online—the smell of coffee was a reassuring one. It reminded him of Gibbs. Though his boss had magically retained the ability to sneak up on him (some sort of _Guide_ "super-power," or maybe just a Gibbs-power?), every now and then he'd pick up the fragrance of the dark-roasted brew moments before Gibbs appeared, cup in hand. If there were such a thing as a person having a comfort-smell, coffee did it for Tony, even if he wasn't too big on drinking the stuff himself. And wouldn't Sandburg have just had a field day with this kind of admission. Tony could almost hear him enthusing: "Just one more proof of the bond you guys share, man."

"Coffee grounds," Tony said aloud, hastily, hoping he didn't sound too enamored about it. Just to be impressive, he added smugly, "Hazelnut flavored

Avery was simply beaming. "Wonderful."

Now he was on the last container—barring any Avery might have left in that box of his that he hadn't yet put out on the table. There was a depressing thought. Tony eyed the new mystery; whatever the stuff was, he was guessing it was a combination as with the oregano and sage. It was a ground, grayish mixture. First he picked up on a spicy, not entirely unpleasant smell. "Some kind of pepper. Chili?"

Avery nodded.

"And…regular pepper, too." Tony raised an eyebrow at the next one. "Brown sugar."

Avery made a noise in the affirmative.

There was one, or maybe two more, things he was missing, but Tony couldn't quite place either…

"Taste it if you need to," Avery instructed, wryly promising, "There's no poison in it."

Tony wasn't so sure, but, giving it a suspicious look, he reached with his free hand to dab a forefinger in the mixture, and touch it to his tongue. He turned up his sense of taste by a few degrees, tasted the sting of the pepper, and the molasses flavor of the sugar. Another flavor was blended with the sugar. "Cinnamon," he declared with certainty.

"Incredible," Avery praised. "I think you've certainly earned—"

Tony interrupted him, "That's not all…"

"No—no, I'm quite sure that was all. I—"

Anything else Avery said never reached Tony. As he tried to place the last ingredient, a strange buzzing began in his ears. Belatedly, he tried to spit out the concoction, taste of any kind suddenly becoming too sharp on his tongue, the pepper—and something else?—burning acidly.

Yup, he'd just made a big mistake.

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: **Sorry for the wait...and the cliffy... I've been really busy, and will continue to be busy for several months, but I'll try to get a few chapters up more quickly, here (most responses to reviews continue to be sacrificed in order for that to happen, though :/ ). Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful feedback! :D


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7  
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She'd only known the guy for, what, ten minutes? Already, though, Abby had gone from feeling angry, to thirsting for his blood with a passion.

Avery was just so _smooth _about manipulating. It made her want to beat him bloody, but he'd backed her into a corner before she could even get half the things she was burning to say off her chest. The way he treated Tony like…a _thing_, to be instructed, and labeled "Sentinel" just like you'd label a single specimen of some fascinating new species. Well, that was actually probably pretty close to how Mr. Thomas Avery did view Tony.

Yeah, back to carving out his heart with a dull spoon—all a fantasy. For now.

Truthfully, though, she was scared. However much she smiled and assured Tony, her instincts were panicking about _everything_ to do with the situation. Maybe she'd spent so much time with Gibbs she had developed her own "gut feeling" meter. She was scared for herself, sure. It's not like she didn't have a healthy desire for self-preservation, and if this guy found out she wasn't Tony's Guide…well, she really beginning to believe he would get rid of her. And not by sending her home with an apology.

But there were just gazillions of other problems, more frightening, for her to worry about than preserving her own skin. Sitting handcuffed to the chair, watching Tony sniff things out for Avery, her mind was running the gamut of fearful possibilities.

What did this guy have in store for Tony? What if Tony zoned? Spiked? She might do her best to be there for Gibbs and Tony—happily dub herself "Keeper"—but this was like being taken from preschool and suddenly asked to jump ten grades and survive high school without a gradual transition. Figuring out things like which detergent kept Tony from breaking out in a rash, or authoritatively talking sense into Tony when he doubted himself, or even telling off Gibbs when he, of all people, doubted his ability to do what was right by Tony—those were all things she could do. But _this_, being out in the field, figuring out what to say to help him, like _Gibbs_ helped him...it made her feel small, and useless, and terrified, to think that Tony had only her to rely on.

She knew Tony was afraid for her, too, and, somewhere, afraid for himself as well, though he tended to stow his own self-preservation instincts like unnecessary luggage that just got in the way of his performing at the top of his game. Gibbs hated it when he did that, and so did she.

Still, she couldn't help but feel satisfaction as she watched Tony easily label the contents of each container Avery presented to him. _That's it Tony, show that Avery-man what you're made of. _

She felt like a proud parent, as he ticked off the ingredients of the last mixture, and was filled with smugness when Avery's expression became truly awed. _Wait till he starts shooting lasers out of his eyes and fries you on the spot. Ever stop to think he might have a few super-powers up his sleeve that you don't know about? Huh? _Come to think of it, being able to shoot lazers out of his eyes _would_ have come in pretty handy right about now. But, if nothing else, they both had some one else coming for them; wait until this guy saw the super-power that was Gibbs' Wrath. Oh yes, that would be one ugly confrontation—and it was only a matter of time. She was as sure of that as she was of anything.

Then something went terribly wrong, and Tony was hunched in on himself, free hand grabbing for the table. When Avery had said "There's no poison in it," he may have been telling the truth as he knew it. But there was what was poisonous to humans, and then there was what was damaging to _Sentinels_, and there was obviously something in the concoction that didn't mix well with _this_ Sentinel, at least.

Abby was intently on her feet, belatedly remembering that her left arm was anchored to the chair, her movement jerked short by the cuff. The chair was heavy, but regardless she dragged it with her an inch or so, before demanding, "Get this thing off me."

Tom Avery was on his feet—and even Avery Junior was looking surprised from his chair—but he only stammered, "Ah..ah…I, don't think—"

"Get. It. Off." The only thing keeping her from yelling it at the man was Tony's condition, and not knowing whether or not his hearing might be going super-sensitive.

In a rare act of wisdom, Avery motioned for one of the Goons to undo the cuff. Abby was instantly at Tony's side, on her knees, but not daring to immediately touch him. In his concise but detailed way, Gibbs had related to her exactly what had happened with Tony in that alley outside of the bar, way back before any of them really knew what this Sentinel stuff was. When she'd heard about it, Abby had hoped never to see Tony go through a sensory spike—hoped he'd never have to go through even one sense spiking, ever again—and prayed she wasn't witnessing one now, either. But she wouldn't add to the problem, if that was what this was. If it were the case, who knew which of his senses might be causing him the obvious pain he was experiencing.

But somehow she had to find out, from him, what was going on. In a whisper of a whisper, she spoke in his ear, "Tony?"

Tony was breathing heavily, but the sound of her voice didn't seem to hurt him. He acknowledged her with a husky-sounding, "Abbs."

She laid her hand on his shoulder lightly, and he didn't jerk away. "What is it?"

"Not…spike," Tony said between a heavy intake of breath. "Or…dunno, don't think it is. It's…"

"It's what?" she prodded, when he trailed off.

"It's…" He gave a gasp, and she could feel him shiver. "Can't breath…so good. Things…look…sound…strange."

"Tony? Tony…" With a gentle hand, she guided his face so that she could meet his eyes. He didn't have them squeezed shut, as she'd expected. They were wide with confusion…and fear?

He met her gaze for moment, words a disjointed jumble, a small shudder in his voice breaking her name into two syllables, "Ab-by, I dunno wha's'happening…everything feels…"

With her free hand, Abby took Tony's un-cuffed hand, at a loss what to do, but imbuing her voice, and expression, and her grip with all the caring she could. "Hold on, Tony, focus—"

But he couldn't seem to focus at all, and interrupted her with small cry of distress. He didn't pull away, but his eyes seemed to glaze over, and she could feel his panic.

Many a time Abby had wished her stalwart Tony would be a bit more receptive to things like hugging, or just a bit of human contact, given by people 'cause they cared about him. Good grief, even Gibbs—_especially_ Gibbs—knew how to give and take pats, parting kisses on the forehead, and other causal but genuine signs of affection. But Tony always seemed to shy away a little from that sort of thing. It wasn't quite as if he didn't _like_ it, necessarily, but kinda like he thought of himself as having some disease he was afraid of passing on, even through a brief hug. Maybe he didn't think people would like him so much if he let them see him up close. Abby had noticed the trend a long time ago, and found it as ridiculous as it was cute, in a pathetic way: it wasn't other people Tony held at arms' length, it was _himself _he kept back from others.

But right then, as Abby guided Tony forward into an embrace, with his head willingly resting against her shoulder, she would've given a whole lot for him to be his strong, independent self, capable of shrugging of the most vicious inner pain with a shrug of his shoulders and a bright smile.

"C'mon, Tony, it's gonna be all right," she whispered, and couldn't help but feel susceptible to the self-doubts assaulting her. _I'm sorry I'm not Gibbs.  
_

_

* * *

_

Ziva was not so sure this idea was a good one. But she was not about to question Gibbs, and McGee had not shown such an inclination, either.

It was true, since they'd been thrown the figurative "bone" by Miss Fabian, he had been much more his usual, merely irritable, self. But, as ever, that snarling tiger was only a minute—one delay—away from making a reappearance, re-immersing Gibbs in his righteous crusade against criminals, or bureaucracy, or legal "technicalities"—or anything that stood in the way of him finding _his_ people.

Glancing at Gibbs, as he turned the wheel hand over hand, swinging the car in a sharp left, Ziva realized the tiger never really left. It was only on the prowl now: it had prey to stalk. Having prey always gave the tiger enough grim satisfaction to keep it from snarling quite so undifferentiatingly at anyone in close proximity.

And if Gibbs could hear her thoughts making elaborate analogies between him and a tiger he might just turn and give her a feral smile.

It was only early afternoon, and already Gibbs' third cup of coffee was in the cup-holder. Third cup of coffee that she'd _seen_. This meeting they were driving to did not bode well at all for Mr. Edward Collins, but Ziva was not about to waste any pity on him. Even if here were not involved in Abby or Tony's disappearance, well…he was still very, very _annoying_. Perhaps not annoying enough to merit a full measure of Gibbs' anger but, she supposed, him seeing her back Gibbs up on this might just dissuade him from making any more advances toward her. There was a thought that brought a bit of a feral smile to _her_ face. And, if Collins was involved in this, she might not leave him at large to ever make advances on any woman ever again.

Gibbs pulled a sudden right turn, and Ziva braced herself against the door. Her teammates had told her tales about famed Gibbs' rampages of the past, two examples being with Ari, and against the deranged woman who'd mailed NCIS the Y Pestis, infecting Tony. She wondered how this recent rampage compared.

She did feel a bit at fault for not having volunteered herself, and McGee, to have gone alone to get Mr. Collins. After all, McGee had already suffered under more than his fair share of Gibbs' impatience today while finding the signal from Collin's computer (apparently Nerdy Ned's smarts had their limits: he'd run and left no credit card trail, but brought his laptop and used his NCIS employee mail account).

However, Ziva had founded her own excuse on the perfectly reasonable grounds that stepping in front of a moving Gibbs was about as likely to get you mown down as stepping in front of a moving train.

Their goal was a Starbucks on the corner of a congested intersection. Parking in any of the cramped spaces left was a proposition just this side of impossible. But never let it be said Gibbs wasn't determined in the face of a challenge, or used to making things work. The narrow parking space that had obviously intimidated some other costumer wasn't able to get rid of Gibbs so easily.

It only took a cursory glance around the interior of the mildly busy coffee shop to spot the object of their search. Ziva let Gibbs take the lead (she, unlike Collins, didn't have a death wish), staying just behind him as they came up silently upon the man.

"We'd like to have a word with you, Mister Collins."

Collins had his back to them, and when Gibbs spoke in his ear he, literally, jumped, whirling on them with wide eyes.

"Who—" Gibbs held his badge up, close to the man's face, interrupting the question before it could fully form. Collins stammered, "Agent Gibbs—"

"—Special Agent DiNozzo's boss." Gibbs left no room for the man to wonder why he was there.

If the darting look in Ziva's direction was to assess whether or not he might find in her an ally against the man baring down on him with steely grey eyes, all he got from her was scrutiny from pair of equally steely brown eyes.

People were staring at the confrontation, though, and Ziva displayed her own badge, proclaiming their business "official," and assuring them everything was under control. She smiled benignly at Collins. "The man _is_ coming with us quietly, yes?" That was for the room at large. More privately, she advised Collins, "Agent Gibbs has not killed anyone this week, but I think he would like to. I would not try anything if I were you."

Collins nodded wordlessly, though he did look ready run when Gibbs produced handcuffs, none-too-gently turning him around and ordering him to put his hands behind his back, securing the cuffs with even less gentleness while Ziva searched Collins for weapons.

"I didn't do anything," Collins said, defiance coming a little late after his all-too-evident terror at their arrival. "You guys can't have any proof. I'm just _cooperating _because I don't want any trouble_._" Collins asked, voice taking on a definite edge of panic when they didn't respond to any of his false bravado, "You guys just want to…talk, right?"

Cuffs secured, and with Ziva gathering the man's laptop, Gibbs directed Collins towards the door with a firm hand on his back. He was making no promises, and let the man squirm for a minute before answering with sinister ambiguity, "For a start."

* * *

** TBC**

**A/N: **I really don't have anything intelligent to say, other than just..._thank you _to all you who continue to read and review! I'll try to have more up soon. ;)


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**

* * *

**

An hour of sitting on the rickety cot next to a shivering Sentinel, trying to get through to him and failing, had obviously not been enough, even if it was all Abby had to offer.

Even though he was obviously in pain, the only noises Tony'd been making were small moans every now and then. He'd remained curled into a fetal position for a long time, eyes open but glazed over.

Any hope she'd had of her subdued litany of reassurances, and hesitant touch, soothing Tony had been dashed just a few minutes ago. He'd scared her half to death, sitting upright as unexpectedly as he had, moan escalating to a more sustained whimper—a panting, desperate sound—before he made a stooped-over, lurching effort to reach the bathroom. With Abby supporting him, she only got him there just in time for him to retch into the toilet. The room was more like a closet, and the two of them barely fit in it at once. Abby squeezed herself in, shoving aside any thought of sanitation and simply sitting where she could sit and still maintain contact with Tony. She didn't know if her touch on his back had helped, but it hadn't appeared to hurt. It seemed he was hurting in too many other ways to even know Abby was there.

Sitting there listening to him pant, and dry-heave, and pant some more, all the while looking so panicked and lost, had filled her with such helplessness. Finally, when it had been clear that there was simply no bile left for him to spit up, Abby had awkwardly maneuvered Tony to his feet and back to the cot. He collapsed limply onto it, shivering, one hand wrapped protectively around his middle. She'd piled blankets on him from both cots, and still he shivered. She whispered to him to close his eyes, trying to get him to relax, pleading with him to tell her what was happening. Whatever was happening, he'd been lost in pain, and her voice hadn't been enough to bring him back from it.

Then he'd started to come out it. He flinched under her touch—more of a twitch, actually. Eyes that had been frighteningly vacant drifted in her direction.

"Abbs," he whispered, "you look…"

She leaned in close, stroking his hair in a gesture that was at least soothing to _her_. She tried not to sound too eager, but she was desperate to communicate. "Tony? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"You look…s' pretty." She could tell it wasn't some inane Tony compliment. He blinked at her with bleary wonder, rambling like a too-tired child, "Light's all…" He'd frowned, considering exactly what the light _was. _"It's all…bright. Lotsa colors." A smile came softly over his face. "S'nice. I feel real good, Abbs."

"Shhh…" She kept stroking his hair, since he didn't seem averse to it. It made her feel like she was actually doing something, instead of sitting there, punting. "I hate to break it to you, but you don't _look_ so good right now, buster. Maybe a little nap, huh? Just close your eyes?"

But he kept blinking owlishly at her, looking mesmerized. "Abbs?" He shuddered hard. "I don' feel s'good." With a gasp, he closed his eyes against the light, but not to sleep. Groaning, he buried his face against her thigh. "Hurts… Too many colors. Bright. Hur's, Abbs…"

Then sounds began to bother him, and his pleas devolved almost entirely into a combination of "hur's," and "Abbs," with anything else he said too muddled for her to make out at all. She tried to get his attention again, tried to get him to focus on the "dials," but he was lost to pain again.

She wanted to cry, but it was selfish to sit there and wallow. Just because she felt inadequate—and was, compared to Gibbs—didn't mean she had the right to deprive Tony of the one source of help he had right now. She had to think, pretend she was a Guide. Hadn't she said, way back at the start of all this, that she was one of his keepers? But this was way beyond her. _Oh yeah, Abby?_ _It's beyond _your_ ability to cope with? _She looked at Tony, shivering uncontrollably under her hand. _You think he feels like he has the ability to cope with this? Get a grip, girl. _

So she did. Even if she wasn't acing this impromptu Guide test, she _was_ good at problem solving.

After forcing herself out of the morass of worry and self-frustration she'd fallen into, the answer came to her with surprising ease. Or she hoped it was at least a partial answer. First, though, she had to draw some attention without bursting her Sentinel's ear-drums.

Glaring at the closed door the two Averys and their goons had disappeared through, Abby shook her head at the option. No way was she going to start yelling, much as it would've satisfied the restless anger she felt. Rage towards Avery was ever simmering on the back burner, even if she had to set it aside to focus on undoing the damage they were doing to her Sentinel.

It was time to find out where that spy camera was and use it for _her_ purposes.

Standing on the cot that Tony didn't occupy, she scanned the small perimeter of their cell. Her attention was quickly drawn to the vent above the bathroom. Above the fan a small lens "eye" stared at her. Success.

Aiming her glare it, now, she demanded, "_Hey_. Hey, whoever's watching had better get their butt in here." She paused to better gather her impervious, angered Keeper look. "_Someone_ better answer me, quick."

Someone did. Thomas Avery himself hurried in, looking properly worried.

"Is he…all right? I have been monitoring his condition, and I—"

"—No, he is _not_ 'all right," Abby interrupted, drawing near to the door of the cell, but always keeping a peripheral eye on Tony, and remembering to keep her voice low. "He's about as far away from all right as you can get, and as soon as it can be arranged, you'll be doing even _worse_."

Avery didn't look afraid, but he did look surprisingly apologetic. "Miss Sciuto—ah, may I call you Abby?"

"No."

"Right. Miss Sciuto. What has happened to the Sentinel…_this_," he gestured towards Tony, "was not a part of the plan. My brother is not what you would call an enthusiast of my Sentinel theories. He doubted the Sentinel's abilities, and, quite without my knowledge, has conducted a foolish experiment on your friend. I am deeply apologetic for his error. I never would have approved of it."

As if she cared about his apologies, unless they involved _releasing_ them. "_What did your brother do_?"

"It was a very…very small dose of…ah…" he cringed faintly before finishing, "LSD."

Turning her back on him, Abby paced exactly two steps away from before her mounting fury had her pacing right back, white-knuckling the bars and all but pressing her face to them as she restrained the urge to make a grab for the man's throat. "Do you even know what it's doing to him? Did your brother even stop to think for a minute the kind of effect _LSD_ could have on someone with _heightened senses_? _I_ don't know what it's doing to him. It could do anything to him. It could be fatal to Sentinels for all I know."

"Is there anything I can…"

"Yes!" it was exclamatory, but still kept to a vicious whisper. "Let. Us. Go. He needs medical attention, and I'm assuming you don't have a qualified doctor handy."

"I do have some basic medical knowledge myself, and there is no reason to assume LSD will kill the Sentinel. Such effects as he is currently suffering are not uncommon for 'normal' users, and there is no reason to believe that the pain he's experiencing, though unpleasant, will be fatal or seriously damaging."

_Ooo_, she'd just _show_ him "fatal" pain. She'd show him some serious damage. She'd wipe that condescendingly sympathetic look right off his face, and then she'd let Gibbs have whatever was left of him.

"The emotional effect the drug has on an individual can vary. It is unfortunate it appears to be affecting him for the worse. Fortunately, my brother assures me it was a very small dose that he added, and I expect the drug will by eliminated from his system shortly. Sentinels often metabolize drugs, such as sedatives, at an increased rate, do they not?" Abby just glared, and he cleared his throat, finally looking a bit uncomfortable. "Is there something I can get you?"

"Your head on a platter" came to mind, but she didn't want to waste any more time she could be using to help Tony. "A white noise generator, and more blankets. Now."

He allowed her the imperious tone without argument, nodding, and leaving without further comment. Considering a white noise generator was likely something Avery had to go out and buy, he actually procured her one fairly quickly. The half hour or so she must've spent waiting still felt like a lot longer. She snatched the blankets from the goon who brought them, but, with the lack of outlets inside their cell, she instructed him to set the white noise generator up outside and pull it in as close as possible. Crouching down, she reached through the bars and turned it on. The static noise blanketed the room—and, she hoped, diminished the effect any noises might be having on Tony at the moment.

At first she thought it wasn't helping Tony at all. She continued doing what she'd been doing from the start: talking softly about nothing in particular, just to let him know she was there, and using her fingers to rub small circles on his back.

When, after a few minutes, Tony turned over onto his back with a moan, she wasn't expecting to find his gaze fixing on her with actual lucidity. Pain was still there, but he seemed calmer. It might've been the LSD wearing off, but she hoped the white noise had helped at least a little.

"Just kill me now."

He said it enough like himself—like Tony, whining over a paper cut—that the complaint was instantly reassuring. But he had a whole lot more than a paper cut to whine over.

"And risk Gibbs' retribution for hurting his Sentinel? No way," Abby retorted, careful to say it quietly enough for Tony's ears only, even if the white noise still humming around them was helping to cloak their conversation.

"Good point…" Tony mused sleepily, words not slurring like they had before, but still faintly muddled. "M'special like that."

"How're you feeling?" It was a dumb question given what he'd been through, and not likely to get an honest response. For all Tony's whining, he could be stoic with the best of them when it came down to serious stuff.

"Terrible," he responded flatly, eyelids half shut and still drooping.

Then again, he seemed in an inordinately honest mood.

The white noise wouldn't keep Avery from _watching_—and they were going for a very close Guide-Sentinel relationship, right? It wasn't hard acting. "Poor baby," she said, only partly teasingly sarcastic, as she leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss on his forehead. "_Now_ it's naptime."

"On it…"

Swearing was not one of the more pleasant sounds Tony had ever woken to. He squinted at Abby's back, which was a few feet away from where he lay on the cot, and focused on traversing the hazy realm between unconsciousness and semi-awareness. It didn't help that, although the worst of the sensory overload was lessening, whatever it was he'd eaten packed quite the punch in the side-effects category.

There was the familiar tingle and ache running through every nerve, the phantom pain he was used to feeling after overtaxing his senses. Even so, it seemed like he was cued and on-guard the moment he opened his eyes. His hearing seemed to have picked up on Abby's angry voice, and woken him, even though his body obviously hadn't had enough with resting. Sight, too, seemed ready and alert—a bit too much so, making even the meager light they were provided here, in their cage, seem bright enough to make him want to roll over bury his head in the pillow.

Too bad his instinct to protect seemed to be coming online right along with his senses. Sandburg had told him as much, advising him: "Don't fight it, Tony. Protecting is what Sentinels _do_." He'd also said something about maiming and killing people not always being the reasonable options they might seem to be, even in the line of protecting. _That_ urge was to be fought, apparently, although Jim hadn't commented.

Tony couldn't help but think that, given the situation, even Blair would've agreed to at least a bit of maiming. If only Tony were in a position to get his hands around Avery's neck. Instead, he was just hoping he could make his way to his feet, and get in between Abby and them, in the process hopefully getting Abby to stop making trouble for herself. After all, Tony had a reputation as a smart aleck to maintain, and she was stealing all the good lines.

"If you think I can't do some serious damage, just because I'm a girl and a civilian, then you better think again," Abby was snarling with more serious viciousness than Tony was used to hearing from her. "I'll claw your eyes out if you open that door with any purpose other than letting us go. Doping a Sentinel—who was unaware, at that—with LSD? You're complete _morons_. You're _animals_. No wait," Abby paused for sarcastic effect, "that would be insult to animals—and morons, for that matter."

She really was getting all the best lines. But wow, LSD. That explained a few things.

Tony found his limbs finally responding to his brain's commands to move, but he also quickly discovered there was a reason his limbs had been procrastinating. It was a wobbly elbow he propped himself up with. The accompanying involuntary groaning gasp for air he gave was not a part of the fierce and terrible avenging Sentinel routine he'd been going for, but it did get Abby to turn and come in his direction. Trying to forestall any fussing, Tony decided to rush sitting up. The plan backfired pitifully, and instead of terrible or fierce, he became the wheezing Sentinel, listing against the shoulder of his pseudo-Guide.

"Excellent," Tony heard Avery's voice say, from somewhere beyond the immediate buzzing in his ears, "he is up."

Tony could only assume he himself, freak of the hour, was the topic of excellence, and grumbled back, "No, _he_ is only just passing the semi-upright finals, and may at any moment be demoted back to horizontal. What's more, there is nothing about this hellhole that could by any stretch of the imagination be called 'excellent.'" Good. The buzzing noise seemed to be fading. Mouthing off always made the world a brighter place. He smiled at Avery's now less-than-blurry face. "We'll call the front desk when we want room service, bellboy."

"Despite what you might think, I am glad you are doing better," Avery said with admirable poise.

"I've changed my mind; you may bring me some coffee. Shoo, now, and don't take all day."

Avery sighed, but seemed to be in a mood to humor. "And is there anything I could bring you, Miss Scuito?"

"Caff-Pow."

"I've never heard of—"

"—Caff-Pow."

"Ah." At least Avery could recognize a stone wall when he ran smack into it. "I will see what I can do. Anything else?"

"Food. Lots of it. Pronto. And a doctor on the side." Abby was still all mad energy. Tony was impressed.

Avery left without saying more, and Tony found he had no will to move away from Abby's supporting shoulder.

She squeezed the back of his neck with warm, strong fingers, and groused, "Whatcha want to bet he goes for McDonald's instead of Perkins?"

"Don't care. M'too tired to eat."

"Well, no coffee on an empty stomach."

"Don't want coffee."

Her fingers went to his forehead, and Tony was too tired rouse himself to squirm away, especially when her gentle touch seemed to ground him in the present, at the same time making him succumb partway back into the exhausted haze trying to claim his brain. It was embarrassing to note how being a Sentinel had changed him into a person who craved these kind of simple moments of physical contact, however brief; but, then, Tony supposed he'd always wanted it on some level, even if he was generally uncomfortable with the attention once he actually got it.

There were the head-slaps as an exception, of course. Head-slaps were something sane people didn't go actively _looking_ to get, and they were something that didn't require anything more than that split-second of contact—no eye-contact, no awkward emotional sentiments expressed, just that grounding heart-beat of connection that had always seemed to adjust Tony's focus, even before he was a Sentinel. Tony remembered grousing, once, to Abby about Gibbs' growling, head-slapping method of dealing with him, and Abby's response—about it making Tony feel _wanted_—and Tony couldn't argue with that. Yeah. So Gibbs did understand. Sometimes he understood more than Tony wanted to admit. It was true most days that anything more overtly caring than a head-slap would've put Tony on edge, made him feel cornered.

Abby always seemed to know these things. Which was maybe why it wasn't so hard letting her do the whole openly-caring thing; it came down to the fact that there was simply no stopping her, anyway.

Tony realized he must've drifted off into a state of semi-unconsciousness again, when he roused to the sound of Avery's voice. It wasn't quite music to his ears.

An inflexibly domineering Abby ordered: "You can set them there. Don't even think about coming a _single_ step closer, or you'll regret it."

Through half-lidded eyes, Tony saw that one of the goons was unburdening himself of a large take-out bag, and a tray of drinks.

"Abbs," Tony rasped in her ear, "we should rush 'em, now."

"Maybe when they come back for the garbage," Abby whispered back.

It was kind of her not to point out that Tony was weak as a kitten, and in no shape to be of any use to this half-cooked plan of his. Tony decided the better part of wisdom was shutting up before she was forced to point out that harsh truth. Besides, while his sluggish brain had been processing all this, the goon had done as Abby directed, and was backing out again.

"Don't bother to shut…" the door clanged shut, and Tony finished with a sigh, "…the door."

"Here, lean back." Abby shifted his weight so that he was resting back against the wall at the head of the cot. In the blink of an eye (or, at least in Tony's rather lagging blink of an eye) she had the feast out of the bag, and spread out between them on the mattress.

"It's like a picnic. Jail-cell-style," Tony mused.

"At least there's no glaring sun overhead."

"Abby. Only you would consider sunshine _annoying_ during a _picnic_."

"Well… I burn easy. And honing a good pallor is harder than you'd think."

Tony chuckled. "Then I guess this little vacation—stuck in a dark, concrete-insulated hole—is just up your alley. Kind of like your version of sunbathing."

"I'd opt for a vacation on the beach—being scorched by the sun the whole while—in a heartbeat, if it meant getting you out of here."

"Pallor doesn't suit me, huh?" Tony said with much false peevishness. A vacation on the beach, and the chance to acquire a nice tan, sounded fine by him.

"Not the sickly kind of pallor. Nope. Now eat."

Tony looked at the paper plate she was offering, and his stomach did a somersault. Or maybe a cartwheel. It wasn't McDonald's fare, after all. In fact, by all rights, it should've been perfectly appetizing. Scrambled eggs and sausage sounded good in theory, but right then food in general was too potent for his everything-shy senses. All he could smell was greasy meat, and individual spices that invoked memories of the myriad of flavors he'd had on his tongue, right before thought had morphed into a collage of pain.

The plate withdrew without Tony needing to say anything.

"Tony?"

Tony swallowed the bile at the back of this throat. "What? Green doesn't suit my complexion, either?"

"You want me to make them get something else?"

Tony ineffectually ordered his stomach to stop with the aerobics. The last thing he needed was more smells to deal with. "Only if you're going to eat it."

"Then I'll make them take this back—"

"—No. Go ahead." Tony indicated the food with a jerk of his chin, carefully not looking at it. "How long's it been since you've eaten?"

"I'll keep the Caff-Pow."

"No Caff-Pow on an empty stomach."

"I drink caffeinated stuff on an empty stomach all the time," Abby refuted the need scornfully.

Tony arched an eyebrow imperiously at her. "Do you want Gibbs to get a bad report card when he comes to pick us up?"

"Tony, nothing's more disgusting than watching someone eat when you're sick to your stomach."

"I'll close my eyes. Eat."

"Nice Gibbs voice," Abby grumbled.

"Thank you. But back-handed compliments won't get you out of this one."

"Eating."

She did it so quietly Tony had to peek to reassure himself that she was being true to her word, before resuming his eyelid inspection.

"Maybe just a piece of toast?"

Tony opened one eye again, considered the state of his stomach (no more cartwheels were going on, at least) and took her up on the offer, gnawing tentatively on a corner of the toast, and finding it palatably tame, if a bit soggy. He turned down the second piece. "Let's see if this one stays where I tell it to."

Abby returned the rest of the meal to the paper bag it'd come in, and Tony closed his eyes once more. A moment later, Abby's shoulder touched his as she settled next to him, an arrangement that was becoming a predictable and easy ritual in an unpredictable situation.

"Tony?"

"Mmm."

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you."

Tony was too nonplussed to answer for a long while. "How _didn't_ you help me…exactly?" The thrum of a white noise generator in the background hadn't escaped his notice. He was pretty sure that hadn't been Avery's idea.

"I tried to talk to you, and get your attention, and help you dial things down. But I couldn't."

"Abby, I'm pretty sure no one could've gotten my attention through…_that_."

"Gibbs—" Abby started, quietly.

"—Not even Gibbs. This wasn't a normal situation. You were no more prepared than I was. And, honestly, I don't know how much good dialing things down would've done."

"What do you mean? You were in pain—everything seemed to be on overload."

"Well, yeah. But I tried, as much as I could, to turn things down." More like groped blindly, frantically, with more instinct than conscious thought. "I think the dials were doing their own thing." Up and down, and way, way beyond the highest setting Tony had ever experienced. "I don't think they would've stayed put, anyway."

"I still wish I could've done _something_." Abby rested her head on his shoulder, putting her arm through his to hold on to it like she was never letting go.

"You did, Abby."

"Are you kidding me? I just kinda freaked, and yelled at Avery, and kept on babbling at you."

A teasing smile in his voice, Tony reminded, "You sang, too."

"You…heard that?"

"Right after you started the white noise generator, and things eased up a bit."

"Things eased up?"

"Well, I heard you."

"You did?" Abby sounded embarrassed, a rare thing coming from her. "It was just…a way to keep talking, you know? To let you know I was there."

"It was 'Que Sera, Sera,' wasn't it?" As soon as he said it, facts sprang to mind, rolling off his tongue without any effort: "Sung by Doris Day in 'The Man Who Knew Too Much.' It also starred James Stewart. A classic." It was also about a kidnapping, but Tony tactfully didn't bring that part up. "The phrase 'que sera, sera' was originally a motto from the movie 'The Barefoot Contessa'—and it was originally in Italian, '_che_ sera, sera.'" Realizing he was rambling, rather aimlessly, he ended, "They changed it for the song, 'cause they figured more people in the US knew Spanish than Italian. Good…movie."

He felt Abby shrug. "I've never seen the movie. My Mom used to sing it to me, though. Guess I never forgot the tune—and the words just kinda came."

"It was nice."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a while, Abby tugging a blanket up to their shoulders, curling her feet up underneath her.

"You're still shivering."

"Can't seem to stop," Tony admitted.

What he wouldn't admit was that, while the big rush was over, the LSD was still messing with him, making the walls look like they were "breathing," and sending the occasion blurry afterimage, or ghostly geometric shape, parading across his vision, even with his eyes closed—all of the illusions weirdly pretty in their strange hues and textures, and at the same time dizzying and disturbing. The inanimate world was inexplicably animated. Even if it wasn't creating the same level of sensory overload, none of it was helping his stomach find peace.

Abby didn't seem to need to be _told_. She gave his arm a squeeze, asking very quietly, still with unprecedented shyness, "I could sing some more. If you want?"

Tony gave an emphatic nod, rubbing a hand across his face if he could wipe the drug's repercussions away. Sounds still carried a faintly distorted echoing effect, but Abby's voice, soft in his ear, was something to focus on.

"_When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, 'What will I be? Will I be pretty, will I be rich?' Here's what she said to me: 'Que sera, sera… Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours, to see—que sera, sera. What will be, will be_. _When I was young, I fell in love. I asked my sweetheart, 'What lies ahead? Will we have rainbows, day after day?' Here's what my sweetheart said: 'Que sera, sera… Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours, to see—que sera, sera…_"

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: **Well, that was a shamefully long wait between updates-sorry 'bout that. I do have a good excuse, at least for not updating yesterday (as I promise you I intended to), because there was a huge storm that came through and knocked out our power for half the day. But...at any rate, I hope you enjoyed this long-ish chapter after the long-ish wait. Thanks for all the reviews! :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

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**

"Boss, wait, I found something."

Gibbs paused, and McGee snatched up the sheaf of freshly printed papers, a sensation of barely internalized excitement—one part hope, two parts nervousness—making his chest feel tight.

When Gibbs indicated for him to follow, McGee fell into step—_long_ steps, to match Gibbs'—talking rapid-fire. "So, you know how you, supported by the Director, made it part of my job to monitor the internet for any sites pertaining to Sentinels, and any enthusiasts who might support the theory of their existence?"

"McGee."

"Right." It had been a while since McGee had gotten that particularly irritated "no-duh" tone from Gibbs, but he'd had plenty of chances to study it in his early probationary days, and it wasn't one you forgot. McGee hastened on. "Well, I've been keeping a close eye on a number of forums—you wouldn't believe the stuff these people are _serious_ about. Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster—"

"—Sentinels," Gibbs reminded, not asked.

"Yeah, bottom line. I traced Collins' IP address to a user on one of these forums. Collins is really way…way out there, particularly about UFOs and Area 51." McGee stopped himself this time. He was still working on this conciseness thing. "Even so, his paranoia paid off when it came to drawing some conclusions about Tony. He has one monster thread going on the forum about Sentinels, and it's pretty obvious from some of his descriptions who he's talking about—like, when he talks about the Sentinel zoning on the screensaver. The point is, Collins had quite an audience of fellow Sentinel groupies, asking a lot of pointed questions, and getting pretty worked up about his 'discovery.'"

"One of these 'groupies' stand out?" Gibbs riffled summarily through the papers McGee was handing him.

"More than one. I can't be sure about this, Boss—it's more Ducky's thing—but the feel I get from Collins' last post was that he was still content with just spying on us. But some of the commenters—"

"_Who_, McGee? Collins' fingerprints are on Abby's car. If it's not him, I need a name."

They were in the hall outside interrogation, and Gibbs was ready to open the door.

"I'll…get this information to Ducky, see if he come up with some profiles."

McGee turned to do so, but he got the feeling Ducky's help might very soon be made superfluous. Even if Collins wasn't calling the shots, if he'd helped someone else abduct Tony and Abby, Collins was going to presently be spilling his guts. Gibbs would see to it. McGee was only wondering if there would be any literal spilling of guts, first.

From the observation room Ziva watched Collins, wishing he weren't the merely fidgety type. Had he allowed himself to become in any way out of control, the excuse to interfere would have been a welcome one. She had already offered to talk to Collins for Gibbs, the appeal of interrogating him extremely attractive considering the many breeds of disgust Ziva harbored for the man.

The _little weasel_ had flirted with her, pretending an infatuation with her as an excuse to spy upon the team. It was jumping to a premature conclusion, she supposed, to assume that—or that he was indisputably involved in Abby and Tony's disappearances—before any questions had been put to him, or answered. But in watching him squirm in the interrogation room, her suspicion of Collins had only mounted. And, as those suspicions mounted, so did her need for a physical outlet with which to vent. Or a physical object _on_ which to vent.

It was injured pride she felt, yes. But it was also self-condemnation. Any anger she felt for Collins returned to her like a boomerang. She had been lazy and complacently tolerant of Collins' feeble attempts to impress her. All the times he lingered around her desk—the times she would look up, and catch him loitering, watching—she had only laughed a little, inwardly, and not taken any effective steps to stop him.

"Flattering" would have been too strong a word to describe how his persistent attentions struck her. She had been only idly amused by him. There had been a time when she would never have been so off-guard as to just _allow_ a ridiculous little man to stalk her, and _use_ her. That he had used her, to harm two of her team, was a conclusion her instincts had woken to, the pieces falling into place, painfully, the moment she'd seen his face, matched to the fingerprints off Abby's car, and found out he was missing from work.

Sandburg had spoken of Sentinels and their need to protect their Tribe. He had also spoken of a Tribe's need to protect their Sentinel. Ziva knew she had failed.

Gibbs came into the room at last, causing Ziva to blink in her long study of Collins. She tracked Gibbs' movements, as he closed the door, sat, and set papers on the table between himself and Collins. He did not rage, or try to intimidate Collins.

Personally, Ziva's first inclination would have been to use more…overt tactics. All the same, she knew Gibbs was angry, however his game face read right then. An angry Gibbs—playing it casual—was an unpredictable Gibbs.

Collins seemed to be buying the game face. Ziva smiled to herself.

"Agent Collins," Gibbs started, conversationally.

"Oh, it's just plain…mister." Collins straightened in his chair. "I'm not actually an agent."

"I wasn't referring to your job title." Gibbs flipped one the papers so it was right side up for Collins, sliding it across the table towards him. "I was talking about your online pseudonym: 'Agent_Collins_007.'"

Collins' face visibly reddened. "Collins isn't that uncommon a name. That's…that's not me." He gave a derisive, somewhat giddy-sounding laugh. "'007'? Who does this guy think he is?"

"I don't know, Mister Collins—"

"—Ed, to my friends."

Gibbs turned up the heat a notch. He didn't like being interrupted. "I'm not your friend, Mister Collins."

Sweat rolled down the bridge of Collins' nose, clung to the tip for a second before dripping onto his shirt collar. "What's this all about? Am I going to need a lawyer?"

"Feeling guilty?"

"No." Collins swallowed guiltily.

"Your fingerprints were on Miss Scuito's car."

"I just…stopped to talk with her in the parking lot, the other day, that's all. Small talk is a crime, now?"

"When were you planning on coming back to work?"

Collins did a floundering fish out of water impersonation for a moment, before stammering, "I-I wasn't feeling so good."

"You don't look so good," Gibbs allowed with a dangerous brand of good-natured leniency. "Could've called in sick."

"I…would…have…" Collins said faintly.

Ziva wished she could see more than the occasional glimpse of Gibbs' face, in profile, when he turned his head to one side or the other. Collins was wilting a little bit more every minute.

"What I want to know, _Agent Collins 007_," Gibbs leaned across the table as he spoke, "is where you're keeping my people."

Collins' eyes went wide. "You can't really think _I_—"

Gibbs' fist slammed down on top of the papers. "—You spied on my team, _Collins_." He said "Collins" like a dirty word. "You spied on my Sentinel."

Eyes going impossibly wider yet, Collins darted a look at the camera in the corner to his right. "How can you—"

"—The people who need to know DiNozzo's secret know," Gibbs interrupted dismissively. Ziva knew that Vance was keeping a close eye on all this, and that Gibbs was reporting the details of their progress directly to him. "_You_, Collins," Gibbs continued with venom, "weren't one of those people. And neither were any of your internet friends."

"So I wasn't discreet…"

Gibbs was certainly making up for Collins' one interruption, by cutting him off now, every time Collins started to speak. "Where are you keeping them?" Gibbs said slowly, emphasizing each word with a pause between.

"I'm not!" Collins squeaked. "I'm not keeping them anywhere, I swear."

"But you know who took them." Gibbs jabbed a finger emphatically down on the papers spread out on the table, drawing Collins eyes downward against their will.

Collins stared for a long time, but never answered.

Gibbs stood, chair scraping back, gathering the papers. "Kidnapping's a serious charge." Gibbs sounded almost casual, shrugging. "Especially when one of the victims is a federal agent."

"I told you I didn't take them!" Collins swore—impressively, for a weasel.

"Yeah? We have your IP address attached to _this_ user. It's not hard to tell what Sentinel you were talking about. Either it was you who kidnapped them, or you tipped off the person who did."

Finding Gibbs' face—suddenly very close, as Gibbs came around to lean into his personal space—Collins gave a small jerk of fright, and went very taut and still, like a rodent staring into the eyes of a cobra.

"You don't have any proof," the rodent whispered with shaken audacity.

"This conversation isn't being recorded."

"You can't just…you can't…" panted Collins fearfully, buying the act. "I'm a citizen of the USA. I have rights."

Ziva wondered just how much of it _was_ an act.

"Look," Collins said, in what was probably supposed to be his "reasonable" voice—as if he had anything to bargain with, here, "Agent DiNozzo, as a Sentinel, is a rare find. I couldn't just…_not share_."

Ziva could better see Gibbs' expression now, and it wasn't friendly.

Collins' still had some fight left in him, though, even if it was born of desperation. "He's a Sentinel. I don't know how much you know about Sentinels, but it means he's not a _normal_, like a regular human being, he's—"

Ziva hardly had the time to bristle in anger, herself, before Gibbs had Collins by the front of his shirt, lifting him bodily from his chair. Gibbs didn't say anything, but the action, combined with his expression, spoke for him.

Ziva briefly considered interfering, and as quickly discarded the idea. Gibbs wasn't actually harming Collins. Yet.

"—He's not…" Collins trailed off, clawing ineffectively at Gibbs' grip on his shirt. "You're his Guide, aren't you?" he concluded flatly, with appropriate dread.

Gibbs smiled dangerously in confirmation. "You figured it out."

It was sarcastic. Collins answered seriously, anyway, like a student defending a paper.

"Actually, I suspected it pretty much from the start, the way you…" Collins couldn't seem to break eye contact, even though the cobra was looking ready to strike, "…seemed pretty protective of him from the start."

"Ya _think_?"

"I was only interested in the phenomenon of a real live Sentinel, not in harming the Sentinel," Collins said, if possible, becoming smaller. "And Miss Scuito…" Gibbs grip tightened on his shirt-front, and Collins flinched, hurrying on, suicidal, fearfully: "He thought _she_ was DiNozzo's Guide, even though I told him—"

"—_Name_. Now."

"Avery," Collins half-sobbed, sweat running in rivulets down his forehead, "Thomas Avery—Doctor. T. A., on the forum. He tracked me down, somehow, and showed up at my door demanding to know who the Sentinel was, to know _everything_ I knew. At first I was excited, to have the opportunity to discuss Sentinels with him, and he seemed so knowledgeable, himself. But as soon as it became more apparent he wanted the Sentinel, to study, for experiments—"

"—What kind of _experiments_?" Only Gibbs could thunder at a whisper.

"I don't know—I don't know, honest," Collins rushed to insist, "I clammed up as soon as he started talking about using the Sentinel for research. Then Agent DiNozzo went missing the next day."

"And you didn't bother to tell anyone what you knew," Gibbs growled.

"How could I? I was scared that if I said anything, I'd be held responsible."

"You are responsible," Gibbs spat back.

"Avery was the one who took DiNozzo," Collins protested. "I didn't have anything to do with his abduction."

"And Miss Scuito?"

Collins deflated, tremblingly, his expression going lax in sudden defeat. "I...I had to help Avery, or he would've dragged me down with him. He threatened to tell everything, about my involvement, if I said anything—and if I didn't help him take her, too."

Gibbs released Collins suddenly, to send him thudding back into his seat. He turned away, not to leave but to prowl.

Collins watched him prowl. "You're not going to kill me. You…wouldn't."

"No." Gibbs turned on his heel, as composed in his steady, steely anger as Collins was falling apart in his fear. "I'm not going to kill you. Because you're going to help me get them back."

"I…am?" Collins was shaking his head as he said it, one hand clenched and resting on top of the table, the other rubbing at the crumpled front of his shirt. "But Avery never told me anything. I don't even know if that's his real name, or where he lives. He never said where he was keeping DiNozzo, or where he was going to take Scuito. He just told me the Sentinel was being difficult, and he needed her to help control him, and that all I had to do was stall her, so that his men could take her, and…" He looked into Gibbs' eyes, and stopped shaking his head. After a moment, very grey-faced, he said tiredly: "I'm going to help you get them back."

* * *

"How is he today?"

Tony was getting really, really tired of waking up to the sound of Avery.

"He's sleeping. So be quiet."

Abby's wasn't so nearly bad, even if she was at her petty best, right then. It wasn't bad to fall asleep to the sound of, either. He'd never realized she could sing like that.

"I _am_ sorry," Avery said, polite as always, "but I've given him all the time for recovery I can spare." Speculatively, he pointed out, "He looks better, to me."

"Well you're not his Guide," Abby hissed, "so you can let me be the one to say if he's better. And he's not."

Tony realized he was going to have to interfere, soon, before Abby made herself more trouble to keep around then she was worth to Avery. Tony was beginning to think that the skill of guiding wasn't a Guide-only requirement. Of course, maybe Tony was just lucky enough to have a Guide, and "Keepers," with tempers that ran hotter than the boiling point of the average member on Sentinel protection detail.

In any event, restraining Abby from making regrettable, suicidal attempts on Avery's life was looking to become Tony's new full-time job. Not that he'd have necessarily stood in the way of the attempt, if it weren't for the fact that, right then, her chances of success were looking pretty bleak.

Sitting up was a first requirement, Abby having, apparently, eased him down onto the cot and tucked him in properly after he'd fallen asleep. His head spun a little, but the world righted itself, given time. He felt better. Not better enough to be experimented on, but better enough to stand up and act better, which he did, albeit slowly.

"There, you see," Avery said, with triumph, looking very pleased with Tony.

Abby looked resentfully at Avery, then questioningly at Tony. Tony tried to look rueful in response.

The door banged open behind Avery, admitting two of his muscle-bound assistants.

"Don't worry," Avery assured Abby, "my brother won't be causing any repeat fiascos, as with the LSD. I'll take good care of your Sentinel, here."

"I _told_ you," Abby ground out, "Tony's not a rental, or something, so you can just stop talking about him like that—and if you're thinking about taking him, and leaving me here, think again."

"Abby, it's okay." Tony touched her shoulder lightly. He wouldn't tell her it was a relief, the thought of Avery leaving her here. Tony didn't know what Avery had in mind, but with Abby so up in arms already, giving her some time to cool off could only be a good thing.

"It is so not okay," Abby contradicted, with the beginnings of feverish anxiety coloring her tone. "Nothing about this is okay."

"Miss Scuito, please calm down." As his two goons came up supportively behind him, Avery looked expectantly to Tony, and unlocked the cell's door. "If you will?"

That almost made Tony laugh, the way Avery gestured as he spoke the invitation. It was so _correct_, so ridiculously refined beyond the kind of etiquette the situation called for. Actually, as far as Tony knew, escorting a prisoner from their cell/cage required no etiquette at all. But, then, Avery was an odd kind of fish.

Tony didn't laugh, though. He looked soberly, warningly at Abby, and complied with Avery's "request."

"Tony…"

"It'll be okay, Abby," he repeated over his shoulder, not looking back as he followed Avery, with the goons bringing up the caboose. Tony was impressed with how irrefutable he made the reassurance sound. He hoped Abby was impressed, too.

Tony was brought to the same room he'd initially woken up in, the first time, as a guest of Avery's.

"I suppose you're wondering why I left your Guide behind," Avery spoke, after Tony'd sat and allowed his arms to be handcuffed to either arm of the chair.

"No. Not really. All she'd do is yell at you if you'd brought her."

Avery smiled, almost warmly. "She's very easily upset, isn't she?"

Tony wasn't about to start agreeing and getting all chummy with Avery. "Sometimes. When being upset is warranted."

"Yes, well… Be that as it may, she's a handful."

Tony didn't like the way that sounded, and insisted pointedly, "A _useful_ kind of handful."

Avery laughed softly. "You really are concerned with her welfare, aren't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I am," Tony replied with belligerent pride. Avery had better get it through his thick scull that Abby's welfare wasn't a joking kind of matter.

Avery laughed some more, and Tony had to keep a tight check on his anger.

Avery held up a placating hand. "Please, please, don't _bristle_ so."

Tony bristled. "She's my Guide."

"Pardon me." Avery sobered. "I know the bond is very real to the two of you." He was practically dripping tolerant condescension. "I just find it rather…quaint, and unexpectedly old-fashioned, that you should feel the connection so strongly. It is especially ironic, coming from a Sentinel who in every other way has been most perplexingly singular."

Tony was pretty sure that he should be offended by both the "quaint," and "singular," part. He held his peace, though, and simply frowned his annoyance.

"You really are making progress," Avery said, his clear amazement at the fact further annoying Tony—only Tony didn't know if it was because Avery was amazed, or because he didn't like making progress in Avery's assessment.

There were more important things at stake, however, than Tony's pride.

"You're not going to do anything to Abby." Tony had started it out as a statement, but it wavered too much.

"Not if you continue like this. You've been good to your word, cooperating against Miss Scuito's safety." Avery nodded. "I particularly appreciated your support, a moment ago, with my decision."

_That_ Tony could not leave unchallenged. "Let's get a few things straight: I wasn't supporting you. I don't support you. I will never support you. The only reason I agreed to cooperate was for Abby's safety, and the only reason I was so pliant back there was because I would much rather she wasn't present for anymore of these little _experiments_ of yours than she has to be." Tony tilted his head slightly to one side. "You see, Tom, when you say you'll take good care of me—cynical guy that I am—I have a hard time buying it."

"I see. Well, despite your cynicism, I do hope to avoid causing you any serious damage in the course of my research. I can, however, appreciate your desire to shelter your friend from any possible unpleasantness."

"Oh, good. Let's get on with this, then."

"You're all business," Avery said wryly, turning away towards one of the equipment-crammed tables that lined the wall behind him.

"You're all heart," Tony complimented back, sweetly.

When Avery turned back to face him, Tony stared at the object he held with unease. He'd just been beginning to feel comfortable in his hard-backed chair, too.

"Tom… Um, Tom?" He found himself squirming as Avery came closer, looking perfectly in earnest. "Hey, I really don't think this falls under the category of harmless research."

"It won't hurt much."

"Sure. That's what the doctors with the big needles say every time, too."

Avery was confused, the humor lost on him. "It's not…a needle."

"Yeah, I can see that."

Frankly, the humor was kind of lost on Tony, too.

* * *

**TBC**

**A/N: **Thanks, everyone, for yet more encouraging reviews. :) I'm afraid I won't be able to post more again for several weeks (I'm going to the UK: a dream trip come true! :D), so my apologies in advance for another long wait. There are a few chapters left on this story, and then on to the sequel. This Fall/Winter I should be on a steadier schedule, and thus able to be more consistent with updates. ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

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**

"This is his idea of taking good care of you? _This_? This doesn't even come close to 'care,' this is…" Abby stared hard at the closed cell door, at the empty room. "This is so gonna cost him," she concluded.

"It's just a scratch."

"Gash," Abby countered.

"Scratch," Tony persisted, seated passively, his own sentiments of Avery's treatment quite different from Abby's. When Avery had brought out the knife, Tony had been anticipating something worse than a _scratch_.

"I'm sure there's rule, somewhere, about when a scratch becomes a gash."

"Yeah, and that rule would say this," Tony lifted his arm briefly to indicate the bandaged forearm, "is a scratch."

Abby gave him an exasperated expression. "But the burn—"

"—isn't that bad, either."

With an air of dejection, Abby flopped down to sit next to him on the cot. "Really?"

"Really," Tony assured. "Avery just wants to see if there's any difference in a Sentinel's rate of healing."

"You make it sounds so rational."

"Well…"

"Don't even say it." Abby jabbed a finger emphatically in his face. "If you say one word about Avery being rational, I'm going to get very, very…irrational."

Tony couldn't help a smirk.

"Don't smirk, either. What he's doing to you unethical, and inhuman. Even if it is 'just' one burn, and one…_scratch_, and just because he's doing it in the name of research instead of torture, doesn't make it right."

"Okay," Tony said slowly, "he's unethical, and inhuman, and it's not right. Can I smirk now?"

Abby gave a small, sheepish smile of her own, taking an intentionally deep breath. "Yes." She let the breath out, slowly. "I'm getting way bent out of shape over this, aren't I?"

"If it helps…" Tony shrugged.

"But that's just it, it _doesn't_," she sighed, folding her arms self-comfortingly across her chest. "It doesn't make me feel any better, at all. But what else do I have to do? He just keeps coming in here, doing stuff to you—and there's nothing at all I can do to fix things. I don't even have a laptop, or _anything_."

"Technology withdrawal. Gotcha." Tony nodded with mock sympathy.

Abby socked his arm lightly. "Shut up."

"Your wish is my command."

"No, don't," she fretted, a second later. "Talk. Maybe then I'll stop babbling so much."

"I don't mind."

"_I_ mind. I'm being…all flighty. You don't need a flighty Guide."

"I don't mind," Tony repeated with an amused lift of one eyebrow. He dodged another light cuff to the shoulder. "I do kind of mind you hitting me repeatedly, though. How much Caff-Pow has Avery given you?"

"Not enough." Abby drummed her fingers on her knee with absent-minded energy. "But he said something stupid about me consuming enough caffeine for two people, and won't get me anymore for today."

"For once, Abbs, I think I'm going to have to agree with him."

Abby's smile was more like her normal smile, and Tony had a moment of success—before it wilted as she asked in a small voice, "When your arm's all healed, you don't suppose he might just let us go?"

"Anything's possible," Tony replied, his cheer feeble at best.

"Yeah," Abby agreed wearily, without an ounce of conviction.

"Hey," Tony said, shrugging, and speaking loudly enough for Avery to catch every word, "it doesn't matter, right? Gibbs will be here before then, anyways."

Abby seemed more settled after this reminder, and Tony's sense of success returned. Actually, he felt ridiculously pleased with himself. Usually, managing a distraught Abby was Gibbs' domain.

Apparently, Abby wasn't the only one stepping into a foreign role. This Guide and Sentinel thing was a two-way street—Tony had been getting used to that, with Gibbs. With Abby, it was little different. "Pillow," for instance, seemed to be on Tony's new list of ways to assist his Guide.

Tony wasn't complaining though. Abby's head fit just right on his shoulder, and it made Tony feel oddly empowered to protect her.

That he _could_ protect her was an illusion, of course.

Abby wasn't asleep. Her too-intentionally even breathing gave it away, but Tony let her pretend—until her pretending was hijacked by honest sleep. He wouldn't have needed her relaxed breathing to cue him in, either, because her head began to slide forward. Tony reached up to adjust it, raising an eyebrow when she didn't wake up. Just like an exhausted toddler.

She was probably coming down off a caffeine high—not to mention the general adrenaline high she'd been on from having her sense of justice infuriated repeatedly, ever since Avery had brought her here.

That Avery had brought her here was one of the more truly unforgivable acts Tony had seen the man commit.

Abby gave the stuttering sigh of the profoundly unaware, and Tony smiled, but with grim determination. It hit him as an almost painfully strong need: even if his control were an illusion, he _would_ protect her.

"Tom—I think the Sentinel is having another…episode."

_Episode of _what_? _If Avery hadn't firmly resolved himself not to be easily upset by Ron, he might have thrown the words at his younger brother with unreasonable irritation. Ron treated everything to do with Sentinels like dangerous explosive material; it was beginning to get to Avery, more than he liked to admit.

Instead, Avery rolled his chair over to the main monitor, which Ron had been observing. The Sentinel was indeed having another "episode," and Avery frowned, perplexed. He'd been doing fine yesterday.

"Come," Avery motioned to his brother. "Bring one of the men and meet me down there."

The Sentinel really didn't look good. The Guide, though, almost looked worse. Perhaps it was just her natural pallor, accompanied by what appeared to be a natural ability to work herself up into a state of equal parts worry and livid rage. Avery kept biting his tongue around her, because he really didn't want to make her angry—the Sentinel needed her thinking straight, after all—but it was hard. She really needed to learn not to allow things to affect her so strongly.

She had her hand on the Sentinel's back, comfortingly—but gave a positively snake-like hiss at seeing Avery, demanding in a look: _Make this better. Now._

"What is…?" Avery began.

"Everything's going all wacky again, like with the LSD," Abby explained succinctly.

For a change, the Sentinel, hunched forward with his head in his hands, seemed to feel no need to butt in. Everything about his posture screamed hurt.

Ah. Avery had hoped this wouldn't happen. "I've read about this," he said, in his best wild-animal-taming voice. "I believe it's called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder—HPPD—and it can happen long after the initial use of LSD, or—"

"—I don't care what it's _called_," the Guide interrupted. "He's hurting, and you'd better have an answer that'll help him, or I swear I'll—"

The Sentinel was paying more attention to the conversation than appearances would have indicated. His hand shot out to snare the Guide's wrist, a clear: _Calm down. _And Avery was amazed at how she changed from mother bear to mother hen in an instant.

Avery cleared his throat, quietly, clasping his hands behind his back. "I believe I do have an answer. At least…I have a theory."

"A theory?" the Guide repeated, eyes narrowed. "One that will _help_ him."

"I…think so."

"You better do more than think so," the Guide muttered.

"Just tell me it's not Tylenol," the Sentinel moaned. "Another minute of this Technicolor nightmare, and my head is going to explode."

Avery smiled. "It's not Tylenol."

"What's the catch?" the Guide asked unhappily.

"I…" Avery started.

"—I don't care." The Sentinel stayed hunched forward, not looking up. "Just get me off this merry-go-round."

Ron came with the requested man. Avery met the Guide's gaze as evenly as he could. "Come. I'll show you."

* * *

**A/N:** Dun, dun, dun. :) We're nearing the end, now. Thanks so much for reviewing, everyone! I love hearing from y'all.


	11. Chapter 11 & Epilogue

**Chapter 11**

**

* * *

**

"Are you sure you should leave him in there so long?"

"Miss Scuito, it has only been twenty minutes. If he wishes to come out early, it can open from inside."

"But what if…?" Abby trailed off, knowing Avery was right. She was still worried. "Sensory isolation" chambers might be safe. They might be used in spas, and considered even luxurious, but "sensory isolation" didn't sound like something Sentinel-safe. Not at all. It sounded more like some kind of torture.

It didn't help that the isolation chamber was a white pod-like thing that looked straight out of science fiction.

The room the isolation tank was in was a high-ceilinged room, sterile and impersonal, and too big. There was precious little else in the room to focus on besides the isolation tank.

Avery was flipping through a notebook, making notes on who-knew-what. Watching Avery do so was to want to strangle him with her bare hands, but Abby knew that he knew she wouldn't. Tony was extremely vulnerable right now, and doubtless Avery had men stationed outside the door. Abby wouldn't have gotten far.

Abby disdained the chair Avery had offered her in favor of pacing in what little space she had.

"Don't those things cost a lot?" Abby said, nodding at the chamber.

Avery looked up, winced, and said simply, "Yes," before going back to his notes.

"So you were planning on trying it out on Tony all along, huh?"

"Hmm?" Avery didn't look up this time, responding distractedly, "Oh, yes…"

"He's not even human to you, is he?"

This got Avery's attention again. He blinked owlishly at her a moment. "Well, I suppose…"

Abby made of a noise of disgust. "If you have to _think_ about it," she snorted.

Avery set his pen down and crossed his arms, and spoke to her with extreme patience in his tone: "Yes, Miss Scuito, I see him as human, basically speaking."

"Basically?" Abby threw up her hands, paced a few steps and turned sharply on her heel, crossing her own arms and feeling as if a bad temper was all she had to duel him with. "So _not_ speaking basically, he's just a lab rat?"

"Why no—not at all," Avery contradicted, with what seemed to be real surprise. "His value is…astronomical. I never thought I'd have the genuine article to study."

"You know something? You're hopeless. Completely, and utterly hopeless. And pathetic. You're pathetic and—"

"—Miss Scuito?"

"_What_?"

"Can I get you a book, or magazine, or something?"

She glared a response, and he returned with a supreme lack of concern to his work on the notebook.

Questions were buzzing around in Abby's head, the forensic scientist-cum-perfectionist going crazy with a need to know the details. The problem was, Avery was doing all this by trial and error. He couldn't tell her Tony wasn't in there, zoned out, or…something.

She was really getting tired of seeing Tony in pain—and that was an understatement. She'd thought they were through with the LSD, had put that terrible first incident behind her. But of course she'd heard of HPPD. She knew the kind of long-term side-effects hallucinogenics could have, but she didn't have her head properly in the game, it would seem. It was kind of looking like she didn't even have her head on properly at all, the way she kept flying off the handle.

Or maybe she had her head on _just right_. Gibbs wouldn't have taken any of this experimenting from Avery with anything approaching calm, of that she was quite sure. She just wished she were doing a better job of processing logic while being not calm. Gibbs would be able to multi-task—she was sure of that, too.

That was really what it kept coming back to. Gibbs. _I need you Bossman. I need you to be here, knowing exactly how to help Tony when he comes __out of that thing. Your Sentinel needs you._

Even as she worried, Abby kept bugging Avery, because that was definitely something she could do, and without any pangs of conscience whatsoever.

"How much longer—" Abby cut her own question short, the sound of a gun being fired nearby making her start. Then it made her smile, as Avery shot to his feet with a clear expression of alarm.

"Stay here," he ordered, rushing out.

Abby stayed. It was Gibbs, she felt sure of it. The Bossman had heard her.

But Avery was back almost as soon as he'd left, his brother, and two of his hired guns, with him. They brushed past Abby, and before she could react Avery had opened the isolation tank, and was ordering: "Get him out, get him out—_quickly_."

Abby was quicker than either of them, rushing in the moment she heard Tony's pained grunt. He shied away from the light, dim though it was, and from the impatient grip of Avery's men.

"You're _hurting_ him." Abby tried to get to Tony, but Avery grabbed her by the arm roughly. She pulled back just as roughly. "You can't just yank him out of there, without giving him any time to adjust, when his senses are all—"

"—We don't _have_ time," Avery snapped, showing the first real signs of anger Abby had seen him display.

Abby knew they didn't have time. The sounds of conflict were coming closer. She was _counting_ on them not having enough time to get away. She was also really, really running out of patience for Avery.

Pulling her arm back, she landed a fist square on Avery's nose. It was one of the most freeing actions of violence she'd ever committed.

Avery staggered with a cry, and his men automatically froze in the act of bodily hauling a dripping Tony out of the room.

With perfect timing, the door burst open, and with it came the familiar, heart-warming sound of a voice bellowing: "NCIS! Freeze!"

McGee had never sounded so scary, or looked so thoroughly prepared to fire the gun in his hand.

There was that predictable moment of hesitation in the room. McGee had the advantage of having his gun drawn and leveled, but he was outnumbered.

It was Avery—weaponless, and nose bloodied—that McGee had the gun on, and Avery's men wavered indecisively.

"Do it," suggested another voice. Gibbs' voice, as he came up behind McGee with his own gun raised.

Avery nodded for the men to submit—at the same time as his brother made a noise of anger, and drew his gun.

"Ron, don't, it's not worth dying—" Avery began, stepping forward, blocking his brother in a gesture meant at once to restrain and protect.

But as soon as Ron's gun had come up, McGee had fired at him. It found the eldest Avery, instead. He dropped soundlessly to his knees.

One hand seeking to support his brother, even as the other kept the gun up, Ron made a choked noise of surprise.

"Drop your weapon," Gibbs instructed.

Ron aimed at McGee—and this time, Gibbs fired.

This display seemed to be enough for the men Avery had hired, who surrendered easily with unheeded protestations of innocence. They hadn't known what they'd signed on for; they'd wanted to report Avery; it wasn't about the money, it was about them being afraid for their lives—and so on, and so forth. _The poor babies_, Abby thought sarcastically, tuning them out.

She had flattened herself against the wall as soon as bullets had started flying. Now, in the aftermath, she felt almost too dazed to move. Ziva materialized, roughly securing the two hired men. There were other people in tactical gear, too—SWAT, Abby realized. Someone was crouched down next to the still figures of the two Avery brothers, checking for pulses.

Abby barely registered McGee asking her if she was alright. Gibbs was there, supporting Tony, who thorough the ordeal had remained in a dazed stupor. He was dripping water, and, dressed in nothing warmer than swimming trunks, visibly shivering.

Finding her brain again, along with her direction, Abby snagged a towel off the nearby stack and made a beeline to Tony's side.

Tony winced against the light and noise, unresisting as Abby wrapped the towel around his shoulders and tucked herself under his other arm. He gave a particularly violent shiver, and moaned softly as a door banged open loudly from the hall.

"Sir, the ambulance is on its—"

Abby "shhh"ed the man who'd come up, _not_ using his indoor voice.

"Is the building cleared?" Gibbs wanted to know—quietly.

"Yes, Sir," the man replied, lowering his voice, and frowning at Tony.

"We need to get him somewhere quiet," Abby said, more for Gibbs' sake.

Gibbs nodded. There were plenty of questions he wanted to ask, of course, but with too many strangers present he was taking his cues from Abby without airing them.

"There was a smaller office room on left…" the SWAT officer suggested, and Gibbs nodded again, Abby moving with him as one to retreat from the chaos.

The room was mercifully dim, and instead of attempting to use one of the office chairs—the only furniture besides the desk along one wall—they lowered Tony to a sitting position on the floor against the wall.

"You with us, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked, the quality of his voice as composed as if they were back at the office, and Tony busy with nothing more alarming than a mid-morning nap.

Tony made a noise that went something like "mmft," an apparent protestation against life in general. A few seconds later, he cracked one eye open, croaking, "Boss?" There was a flicker of sudden fear on his face. "Heard gun shots. Abby…"

"Right here," Abby spoke up quickly.

Tony sighed, his eyes once more shut tight. "Hur's."

Gibbs looked frowningly from Tony to Abby and back again. "What hurts?"

"Ev'rything… 'N I was just getting used to the dark."

Gibbs eyebrow went up. "Abbs?" There was anger beneath the surface of his calm, Abby could tell—and it demanded to know what had happened to his Sentinel. But the anger wasn't for her. There _was_ worry for her, but Abby didn't feel like addressing it anymore than she wanted to address Gibbs' questions right then.

Abby drooped next to Tony, leaning against the wall, too, and feeling suddenly very grimy, and tired, and confused by the blankness she felt as regarded Avery's probable death. She decided not to think about it at all, and instead clung to relief—and decided relief was one of the best emotions ever.

"It's a long story, Bossman."

* * *

Tony was pretty sure he was supposed to be the one traumatized by his time with Avery. However, he was beginning to think he was the only one unaffected.

Okay, so maybe "unaffected" was putting things a bit cavalierly, even for him. He'd certainly been embarrassingly affected by the LSD flashbacks. He had blurry memories of being pulled from the isolation tank—thinking his skull would explode from too much light and color—and then Gibbs had been there. Gibbs being there had made everything at once better, and also _worse_. He might've been learning as a Sentinel to depend more on Gibbs, but as Gibbs' senior agent it would probably never cease to be embarrassing to have to rely on his boss when he was at his most vulnerable.

He was pretty sure he'd babbled a bunch of nonsense—something about making "the rainbows" go away?—and he was pretty sure he'd heard Abby and Gibbs talking about him. And both of them had talked to him, over an indeterminable period of time, and through an indeterminable number of events, the details of which all ran together like a bad piece of modern art, all warped, and too headache-inducing to stare at for long.

He'd slept for a long time, he knew that much, and in an honest-to-God bed—not some hospital contraption designed to badly approximate one. Somewhere, Ducky's voice had come into the mix, and Tony could've smiled at the familiar voice—and maybe he had—but shortly after that he'd drifted back into unconsciousness.

Sandburg would've been ecstatic if he could've heard Tony's next thoughts, because the foremost impression he had upon waking was that his "tribe" was secure. He wasn't sure how he knew it, with his brain feeling like mush, but an instinct that overrode all normal forms of knowing told him that not only Gibbs, and Ducky, and Abby were safe, but Ziva and McGee, too.

Another thing he knew, even before he'd opened his eyes, was that he was in Gibbs' guestroom. Well, the guestroom part was an educated guess; that he was in Gibbs' house was unmistakable. Maybe that too was just his highly evolved brain coming to a logical conclusion—since he obviously wasn't at a hospital, and Gibbs had been making a habit of keeping a particularly close eye on him ever since he'd become Tony's Guide.

But there were plenty of other clues to go on. The familiarity of atmosphere that Tony couldn't pin-point. The faint smell of sawdust. Once Tony might have found such ambiguous intuition unnerving. But the lines were beginning to blur, comfortably, between his cop instincts and his Sentinel instincts. He was both. And likewise, Gibbs was both Guide and boss, now, and it seemed almost as if it had always been that way. The facts had just been waiting for the two of them to catch up and get used to what _was_.

Tony cautiously cracked one eye open to stare at the ceiling. Then he cracked the other eye open. The walls didn't breathe. The light coming through a crack in the window shade looked perfectly normal. His head spun a little as he sat up, but he attributed that to the hunger he was suddenly acutely aware of.

He also became aware of another smell, besides sawdust, and of sounds coming from the direction of the kitchen.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he made his way towards the sounds, barefoot and dressed in sweatpants and a well-worn t-shirt he didn't bother to wonder at.

He entertained the idea that he might be able to sneak up on Gibbs—for about the space of five seconds. Then Gibbs spoke, his back still to Tony: "I was beginning to think you might sleep all week."

"Ah." Tony inhaled the heavenly scent of the eggs Gibbs was cooking. "Then I guess none of that would be meant for me."

Tony could've sworn he was getting better at _hearing_ Gibbs' smiles. At least, they were smiles for Gibbs: that subtle change of tone that was indiscernible to the untrained ear.

"I don't think Abby will mind sharing."

Tony glanced around. He felt sure he would've known if Abby was in the house.

Reading his mind, Gibbs said, "I made her go home and get some rest."

"But she threatened to be back by five o'clock. In the morning." Snatches of conversation were beginning to come back to Tony.

Gibbs removed the scrambled eggs from the heat, and turned.

Tony gave a groggy smile under the scrutiny, and asked, "Do I pass muster?" He immediately forestalled a reply, sitting down heavily at the table. "Don't answer that. I probably should've slept all week." It was his turn to read Gibbs' mind, and he did so with a wave of his hand. "And yeah, I probably should've gotten checked out at a hospital, but I'm really, really glad you left things up to Ducky instead."

Without comment, Gibbs dished up a plate with eggs and bacon, and placed it in front of Tony.

Tony ate a few bites in quick succession, washing it down with the glass of orange juice that materialized alongside the plate. A question he didn't want to ask—but needed to—formulated, and left his mouth without his permission. "Boss, about Avery… The gun-shots I heard. I mean, is he—"

"—Dead. Both of them."

Tony took another drink. Of all the things he should've felt, he only felt pity. It seemed like a waste, when Thomas Avery had obviously been an intelligent man. A bit out of touch with reality, and with a bad way of going about researching his interests, but intelligent nonetheless.

"What, exactly, has Abby told you?" He was also curious to know exactly how Gibbs had found them, but wasn't sure his brain was up to asking the right questions yet, much less comprehending the answers.

"Enough." Gibbs had his back to Tony again, but you didn't have to be an expert in Gibbs-speak to hear the anger even in the one word.

Before Tony could say anything, however, Abby descended, making up for lost time by asking at least half a dozen questions about how Tony felt—whether or not he was still having LSD flashbacks, and if he had a headache, and if he really should be up, and telling him she'd brought his sunglasses from the office because sunglasses were supposed to help with some of the flashbacks.

At some point, Gibbs disappeared—and Tony looked around with low-grade panic as Abby asked _again_:

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Tony gave her a long look, patient (all things considered) but a pointed one nonetheless.

Abby looked down at her eggs, using her fork to prod the defenseless yellow substance around her plate. "Just askin'," she murmured, with a guilt-inducing look of disappointment at being scolded for caring. Abby could express a whole lot with a simple pout of her lower lip. She could get amazing results with a simple pout, too.

"Look, Abbs…"

She speared a piece off egg, eating it with a soldierly air. "It's fine."

"Well, _I'm_ fine. I've had a lot of people making sure of it. But I'm beginning to think maybe someone else got overlooked in all the confusion."

He waited for Abby to get the point. When she did, she protested in wide-eyed surprise: "Me? I'm beyond fine. You know Gibbs made sure Ducky looked me over, too—and I didn't even go into shock, or anything. I'm—"

"—Yeah, you're fine, I know. As a matter of fact, I think you've _had_ to be 'fine' for too long."

Abby blinked, slowly, puzzled, and Tony noticed the smudges beneath her eyes, making her pallor look in contrast even more pale than usual.

"If this is your way of saying I've been holding it all together—soldiering it out—while Avery had us, then I think you might be thinking about the wrong substitute Guide. Like I said back there, I was all…flighty." She winced lightly. "I was so not 'together.'"

Tony had seen Abby hurting, sad, angry, and every emotion in between—but such miserable insecurity was a new one. He floundered a moment in uncertainty. Heart-to-hearts were not his area of expertise. He could have glowered at Gibbs for leaving—all but silently ordering him to talk with Abby—but Gibbs not being there to be glowered at was kind of the point.

"Abby," Tony said at last, with what he hoped was inspiration, "you ever think maybe having someone else, more panicked than me, in need of calming down, was exactly what _I_ needed back there?"

Abby obviously hadn't. She pondered the suggestion dubiously. "You're just making that up."

"Nope." Tony realized he _was_ telling the truth. "You know, I never really had the chance to think about what Avery was going to do with me—after you arrived. At least, I didn't have time to really panic about it." He grinned. "Can you see Gibbs filling the panic-stricken role?"

Abby, of course, first saw the sacrilege of this slight on the Boss, however true, giving Tony an outraged look—before gradually smiling a bit, herself. "And I suppose you're gonna say the Bossman was exactly where _he_ was supposed to be, raiding the place and bringing down all fire and brimstone to get us out?"

Tony bit off a piece of bacon. "'Zactly."

Abby looked positively Sandburg-like in her sudden enthusiastic moment of revelation. "Maybe the members of the Tribe just _know_ where they're supposed to be in an emergency. I mean, it's not like we're interchangeable, of course, but maybe different situations call for different members of the Tribe stepping up, and…"

Tony, admittedly, tuned out some of her "revelation," eating the rest of his bacon happily.

"And you really are okay," Abby said at last, not-quite asking this time, but more sounding out the idea for herself, and coming to the relieved conclusion that what Tony had been repeatedly telling her was really true. She sighed, leaning her elbows against the table-top. "You do still look kinda crummy, though, ya know?"

"Yeah, yeah." Tony sat back. "But I'm good, Abbs." He thought of the LSD flashbacks, and the fact that they probably weren't over. "Really, I will be. It's nothing that more bacon can't cure."

He hadn't meant it literally, but Abby immediately picked up one of her uneaten pieces of bacon and reached over to deposit it on his plate, watching in clear expectation of his devouring it, brooking no excuse.

Tony gave her a wry look—but far be it from him to disobey one of his "Keepers."

**The End**

* * *

**Epilogue:**

Gibbs had rewound the tape numerous times. Abby and McGee had both gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. The viewing of it raised questions, unsettling to Gibbs as an agent, and Gibbs as a Guide.

DiNozzo didn't know yet. Gibbs would tell him—or Abby would—but for now he felt the need to stave off bad news as long as possible. Tony was still recovering from Avery; he didn't need this new, faceless threat breathing down his neck.

It might not be a threat at all. Gibbs laughed inwardly, grimly, at his own optimism. His Guide instincts were warning him another way, and paranoid or not after Avery's experiments in Sentinel-observation, his agent's instincts were agreeing. What he'd seen on the footage from the security tapes didn't bode well. From her tone, Abby had known it when she'd called him down to her lab.

The feed was from the security cameras at the apartment complex that Thomas Avery had rented. Things were made even easier for them by the fact that Avery had installed a camera in his own rooms—apparently, paranoid after a spate recent break-ins in the neighborhood. Time-stamped just hours after Avery's death, the videos showed someone—a man, wearing a hooded sweatshirt—letting himself into Avery's apartment with a key. There was no uncertainty about the man's actions; he'd been to Avery's apartment before. He knew what he'd come for, too, calmly taking three hefty-looking journals out of a desk and stowing them in an empty backpack he'd brought.

Then the man left—never showing his face for the cameras. The security camera in the parking lot showed he'd come on a bike. An old bike, as nondescript as its owner. There were no leads so far. The stranger had gone so far as to pull his sleeves down over his hands before touching the handle of the door, and the drawer handle, and had touched nothing else in the apartment. Abby would probably pour over the footage even longer than Gibbs had. McGee was rummaging through the files on Avery's computer, through his e-mail, tracking down e-mails sent. Ziva was looking for friends and family.

Perhaps what grated the most was the fact that Gibbs had missed running into the man by the thin margin of a half-hour. Thirty-seven minute's time, precisely, and Gibbs would've been inside that apartment when their mystery caller had come to take those journals.

The man might've had no connection to Avery's favorite topic of research: Sentinels. Gibbs' gut told him otherwise.

* * *

**A/N: **Well, there you have it. :) Maybe it doesn't feel like a well wrapped-up ending...and that would be because I have another, longer sequel already completed. I am really excited to post it, too, because it was one of those brain-child stories that just took off and wrote itself (okay..exaggerating, but it was fun to do for my first ever NaNoWriMo story, last year). Before I post that, though, I'm going to take a couple weeks' hiatus. Towards the end of the month I'll be going to a Writers' Conference in Texas for a week, but shortly after I get back I hope to start posting again.

Thanks again, all you lovely reviewers! I've been so remiss in responding to y'all, and I promise I'll respond to each of you this time (though you'll have to forgive me if I wax a little maudlin: a favorite bird I've owned for ten years looks like it's going to die today... It's amazing how such a little creature can have such a big personality. *sads*).


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